Gao pragmatic said that he wrote a letter to Nurhachi, not because he was inflated, but because he was indeed confident that he had such prestige to suppress Nurhachi.

At least for this time, he believed that Nurhachi did not dare to have the courage to provoke him.

Maybe the Battle of Monan is still a little too far away from Liaodong, but for the Jurchens, the Battle of Liaonan is a big battle that broke out at the doorstep. The course of the war is now clear to the various tribes around Liaodong, whether Jurchen or Mongol.

Gao pragmatic not only strategized in this battle, but also showed the unattainable strength of the Jurchens. Not only are there many fierce generals under him, but in addition to the power of the Ming court, there is also a team of family members who can be turned into soldiers at any time, and the number of this family team is particularly huge.

What kind of quantity can be called particularly huge? Anyway, Nurhachi counted with his fingers, the population he now controls is less than 20% of the various types of employees owned by Jinghua in Liaodong, even if those female workers engaged in the silk industry are excluded, the population of Jianzhou Zuowei is less than half of that of Jinghua's employees in Liaodong.

Of course, population and employment are not the same thing, but Jinghua's industry in Liaodong is now employed by a large number of young and strong people such as miners and blacksmiths because of the new Liaoyang base. According to Jinghua's habits, such a base must have a mine protection team and a factory protection team, and Nurhachi knows that these people can be turned into soldiers at any time, and they must be counted in Jinghua's armed forces.

And how many troops does Nurhachi himself have?

Don't look at the fact that he just defeated Nikan Wailan, in fact, his strength is more than 3,000 people, less than 4,000 people, which may not even be able to take the Jinghua Liaoyang Iron and Steel Plant, let alone the rest.

You must know that Gao Pragmatic is not only the owner of Jinghua, he is also the left servant of the Ming Dynasty's military department, and he really Gao Pragmatic off, and it is not surprising that he moved the court to kill him Nurhachi first.

What's more, because of the ginseng trade, now Nurhachi is simply inseparable from high pragmatism.

Gao Shishi, who controlled the waterways of the Liaohe River, has now become the de facto master of Liaodong's commerce, and it is difficult for almost any large-scale trade to avoid Jinghua's trade network.

In the trade market of Liaodong, ginseng, fur, honey, mushrooms, fungus, hazelnuts, and pine nuts are all popular specialties in Kannai, and ginseng is the most popular and almost irreplaceable.

As we all know, in the ancient Chinese medicine classics, ginseng is listed as the top grade of medicine. Doctors of the past dynasties believe that it has the effects of replenishing the five organs, calming the spirit, calming the soul, stopping palpitations, removing evil spirits, brightening the eyes and happiness, prolonging life after long-term service, and curing all deficiency diseases of men and women, so the price of ginseng has always been expensive.

At this time, Shanxi Shangdang, which was originally rich in ginseng, was almost extinct because of artificial over-picking, so the main production area of ginseng has been transferred to the Liaodong region where the Jurchens gathered, which made the border city of Fushun in Liaodong become the largest ginseng trade market in the whole Ming Dynasty and even the world.

According to Jinghua's own statistics, the annual trading volume of ginseng from the Jurchens to the Ming Dynasty is more than tens of thousands of catties, according to the price of ginseng at this time, according to the different qualities of ginseng, about three taels to five taels of silver per catty (note: this is recorded in the "Compendium of Materia Medica", that is, the price of about the early years of Wanli, and the price of ginseng on the eve of the end of the Ming Dynasty has skyrocketed to 15-20 taels), so the annual transaction volume is as high as 100,000 taels or even more than 200,000 taels, which is so poor that for the Jurchens who are so poor, how the profits can be imagined.

It can be said that the ginseng trade was not only an important economic source for the Jurchens' life, but also an important economic pillar for Nurhachi's expansion of power. In other words, as long as Gao Shipra at this time stifles the ginseng trade, Nurhachi's strength will plummet, and even internal chaos will occur, which is also impossible.

At such a time, how dare Nurhachi provoke the authority of high pragmatism?

Therefore, after Gao Pragmatic sent Wu Dui away, he wrote a letter directly in the Ministry of War, sent someone to Liaodong through Jinghua's own channels, and handed it directly into Nurhachi's hands. He believed that with the level of Nurhachi's performance in the original history, he would not fail to see the key to this, and would not do stupid things.

Aren't you going to accumulate strength? Okay, then you can continue to stay honest, and don't jump out and make trouble for me in the past few years. As for a few years later, whether you have more strength, or whether I will come back to you to settle accounts after I have dealt with the biggest threat in Liaodong, then we will ride a donkey and read the record book - we'll see.

Gao Shishi himself is actually skeptical about the medicinal properties of ginseng, because he remembers that modern medicine in later generations analyzed the composition of ginseng and came to the conclusion that it is "similar to carrot root", and he is also very clear about the gradual mythological process of ginseng.

The earliest record of the medicinal value of ginseng in China can be found in the Shennong Materia Medica, which was written in the Qin and Han dynasties. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Zhang Zhongjing said in "Treatise on Typhoid Fever" that ginseng "treats the heart ruffian, and the side treatment does not eat and vomits". Later, the medical books of the Southern Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty's Medicinal Materia Medica, the Song Dynasty's Zhujia Materia Medica, and the Yuan Dynasty's Medicinal Law and Image, all mentioned the medicinal functions of ginseng, but none of them were wonderful.

However, in the Ming Dynasty, ginseng suddenly became powerful, and it became "ginseng cures all deficiency diseases of men and women", including "fever and sweating, dizziness and headache", and "leprosy, slippery diarrhea and long-term illness". Ginseng then stood out from the common Chinese herbal medicine and became a "miracle medicine".

Fang Cai once said that the ginseng eaten by Chinese before the Ming Dynasty was mainly produced in the Shangdang region (present-day Changzhi, Shanxi), and was called "Shangdang ginseng"; The second is Liaodong ginseng in Liaodong region, also known as Liaodong ginseng.

In the early years, ginseng was only regarded as an ordinary ingredient and medicinal herb. For example, Su Shi said in a letter to his friend Wang Dingguo, "If you want to send a letter, you only want to send more dried dates and ginseng." If there is no convenience, there is no need to send people, how can you work thousands of miles away? In a letter to Zhang Zhifu, he said, "In case someone comes from the south, it is necessary to send a few catties of ginseng and dried dates." ”

It can be seen from here that for Su Shi, ginseng, like dried dates, is just a food that satisfies the appetite, not a miracle medicine that cures all diseases. And he often asked someone to bring "a few catties" along the way, which also shows that this kind of food was not expensive at that time.

Of course, before the Ming Dynasty, there were also a few varieties of ginseng that were considered very valuable. For example, there is a type of "purple ginseng" in Shangdang ginseng, which is said to grow only on the purple group mountain in the Shangdang area. There is a record in "Mengxi Writings" that Wang Anshi suffers from asthma and needs to be treated with purple ginseng but cannot get it. A friend sent a few taels, but Wang Anshi insisted on refusing it, saying: "There is no purple ginseng in my life, and I live to this day."

However, judging from Su Shi's desire to satisfy the desire of "appetite", "day and night" eating ginseng, at least ordinary Shangdang ginseng is still an ordinary thing in the Northern Song Dynasty, and only a few of its special ginseng products are not superior. But this is not surprising, just like ordinary tea is worth a few dollars, but if you want to talk about famous tea, how many times will the price have to be doubled?

The price of ginseng is also telling. Until the Jiajing period, ginseng was still a low-priced commodity, and a pound of ginseng only cost one dollar and five cents of silver. In the Wanli period, the price rose to about 3 taels of silver per catty - the reason mentioned above. By the time of Chongzhen, the price had reached 16 taels of silver per catty.

The status of ginseng has changed dramatically and it has directly become a miracle medicine, in fact, it still happened after the Ming Dynasty of the Tatar Dynasty, and there are probably four main reasons for this.

One is that ginseng is seen as the embodiment of the royal spirit of the Qing Dynasty. Originally, the name of ginseng has a strong mystery. For example, there is a story in the legend of the Sui and Tang Dynasty Zhiwei "The Five Elements of Guanggu and Modern": "When Emperor Wen of the Sui Dynasty, after someone in the party was in the house, he heard people's voices every night and couldn't ask for it. I went to the house for a mile, and saw that the branches and leaves of ginseng were abnormal, and I dug five feet into the ground, and I got ginseng, just like the human body, and my limbs were all ready, and my voice was refused."

This saying has been handed down, and even influenced Li Shizhen, and the "Compendium of Materia Medica" also wrote about this kind of strange and mysterious talk as the origin of the medicinal effect of ginseng: "Those who grow into ginseng have roots like human shapes and gods, so they are called ginseng and divine herbs."

Specific to the Qing Dynasty, because the northeast of ginseng-producing areas was the "land of dragon prosperity" and was full of "royal energy", ginseng was naturally regarded as the embodiment of this "royal energy". For example, Ruan Kuisheng, a famous literati in the Qianlong period, said: "From the east of Liaoyang, there are all in the mountains and forests, and it is a coincidence? This is a clear link between the growth of ginseng and the local atmosphere of the Northeast, and as for his statement that it is obviously a problem of holding tartars to clear the smelly feet, it is needless to say, in short, these statements strengthen the superstition of ginseng, this is for sure. 187

The second is that the Qing court monopolized the ginseng trade, which pushed the price of ginseng skyrocketing and intensified the people's ginseng superstition.

After Shangdang ginseng withdrew from the market, the Ming Dynasty could only import a large number of Liaodong ginseng from the Jurchens outside the Guanxi as a substitute. The ginseng trade of the Jurchens and the Ming Dynasty was very large, and it was the most important source of wealth for the rise of the Jurchens.

For example, in the original history, from July of the 11th year of Wanli to March of the following year, in eight months, the Haixi Jurchens traded with the Ming Dynasty 26 times at the border, selling 1733.75 catties of ginseng. From the eleventh year of Wanli to the twelfth year of Wanli, the Ming court alone paid 30,000 taels of silver for the purchase of ginseng.

These two deals are only official acquisitions, not a larger amount of private trade. Therefore, in order to reduce the pressure on the treasury and reduce the price of ginseng, the Ming Dynasty in the original history closed the border market for a time, resulting in the rotting of more than 100,000 catties of ginseng accumulated by the Jurchens in Jianzhou.

There are some other things here, which I will not talk about for the time being, but in short, in the entanglement of the ginseng trade, the Jurchens gradually gathered forces against the Ming Dynasty.

After the Tatar Qing entered the customs, the royal family continued to keep the ginseng trade firmly in their hands. At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the royal family set up a special ginseng-collecting organization in the northeast, the "Yamen of the Governor of Doula", and the princes of the Eight Banners were also allowed to send people to the designated mountains to collect ginseng. Private ginseng harvesting was strictly prohibited, and there was even an edict that "if you encounter Han Chinese, you will be arrested".

During the Qianlong period, in order to increase the control of ginseng trade, the "Official Participation Bureau" was established. It is stipulated that all people who go into the mountains to collect ginseng must have a certificate issued by the government. Some of the ginseng collected by the official staff bureau is used in the palace, some is handed over to the internal affairs government for sale or disposal, and the rest is sold to the participating merchants.

The Qing Dynasty's ginseng management system was extremely complex, but in the final analysis, it guaranteed that the profits of the ginseng trade in the Northeast would go to the emperor's own pocket—at most, at 1 million taels of silver per year.

The imperial court monopolized the ginseng trade, and as a result, the price of ginseng skyrocketed. For example, in the Jiangnan area, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has designated "Jiangnan Three Weaving" (Jiangning Weaving, Hangzhou Weaving, Suzhou Weaving) and Guangdong Customs as ginseng franchise distributors. These government-run dealers spared no effort to raise the price of ginseng, so by the middle of the Qianlong period, the price of ginseng had reached 600 to 800 taels of silver per catty; During the Jiaqing period, it broke through to 2,000 taels of silver per catty.

The skyrocketing price of ginseng is complemented by the apotheosis of ginseng. Xu Lingti, a doctor who lived in the Qianlong period, once wrote a "Treatise on Ginseng", mentioning that people at that time had a psychology of "superstitious about the curative effect of ginseng because of its high price": "The reason why the doctor is used immediately when he encounters illness, and the sick man dies without regrets, why not?" To cover the hearts of fools, they all regard the price as good medicine, and the price as bad medicine. ”

The gist of this passage is very simple: patients feel that since the price of ginseng is so high, ginseng is naturally the best medicine. Doctors are also willing to take advantage of the patient's psychology and often prescribe ginseng to them to eat - after the patient eats ginseng, the condition improves is of course the miracle of ginseng, and if the condition still does not improve, he will not complain about the doctor. Because in their opinion, if ginseng can't cure a disease, it must be really incurable.

Well...... Some so-called qigong masters in later generations also made good use of this kind of thinking.

The third is that the Tatar Qing royal family took a large amount of ginseng, which had an exemplary effect on the people. A large amount of high-grade ginseng was retained by the Qing Dynasty because the royal family consumed a lot of ginseng.

According to the Qing court archives "Ginseng on the Bottom Book", in the last two years of Emperor Qianlong's life, "a total of 359 times of ginseng, and 37 29 coins of fourth-class ginseng". He also wrote a poem "Yong Ginseng", saying that ginseng "five leaves and three Yayun Ji Yong, ** Zhu Shilu Ganpu." The earth's spiritual products are yin and yin, and the merits of the medical scriptures are noted at the big end". The concubines and princesses of the Qianlong Dynasty also took ginseng. Even Cixi often eats ginseng, and from October of the 26th year of Guangxu to September of the following year, for more than 300 days, "two catties of ginseng are shared." ”

The Qing Dynasty emperors also often used ginseng to reward ministers. For example, the university scholar Ji Zengyun asked to return to his hometown to recuperate, and Emperor Qianlong ordered a reward of ten catties of ginseng; Fu Heng, a university scholar, led the troops to fight in Jinchuan, and the water and soil were not adapted, and Emperor Qianlong rewarded three catties of ginseng. The vassal vassals of the Qing Dynasty, such as the King of Siam and the King of Annam, also received special gifts such as ginseng.

With the royal family taking the lead in demonstrating, the people's superstition about the "miraculous effect" of ginseng was out of control, and there was an obsession with "if you don't participate in it, you must be completely served".

The last one is the "warm supplement" culture in the south of the Yangtze River, which caters to the prevalence of ginseng superstition. Probably from the Qianlong period, Jiangnan developed a strange tonic culture. For example, Xu Dachun, a doctor at the time, said: "Nowadays, the ancient sage method is despicable and insignificant, and the name of the disease cannot be pointed out, but it is summarized by the clichés of yang deficiency and yin deficiency, liver qi and kidney weakness, etc., and is dedicated to warm and supplement, so that the external evil enters the inside, and it is tamed to the point that it cannot be saved." ”

Xu Dachun's criticism is very in place - of course, what he said about "external evil entering the inside" Yunyun, Gao Pragmatic feels that it is also more mysterious, and can only be understood as a virus infection or something. In short, many Jiangnan doctors liked to prescribe tonic medicines at that time, and among the various tonics, the most popular was ginseng.

This ethos in the medical profession is actually catering to the ginseng superstitions of the people of the time. Since "all the nobles of the capital like to take ginseng, even though they are extremely hard, they try their best to buy ginseng to serve it" - both rich and poor, believe that ginseng can cure chronic diseases through ginseng temperature supplement, then as a doctor, the safest and most profitable way is undoubtedly to prescribe more ginseng when prescribing medicine.

Before the Tatar Qing Dynasty's deification of ginseng was supreme and pragmatic, there were still many Chinese who believed that ginseng was a tonic that cured all diseases. However, scientific testing has long confirmed that the ginseng root, which is considered to be the most effective, has a similar main component to carrots; The other components in the ginseng root also show only very low medicinal properties after extraction.

The only reason why Gao pragmatic does not dare to completely deny ginseng is not the ginseng itself, but the fundamental difference between traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine.

Western medicine is usually very direct, what disease my medicine is used for, you use it for what disease, its efficacy is very clear, and the direction is very strong. But traditional Chinese medicine is different, Chinese medicine pays attention to the monarch and the minister, the same several medicines, even if the amount of the combination is different, sometimes the effect of the medicine is not the same thing at all, and it may not even be for the same disease, which is complicated.

Gao pragmatic does not understand medicine, although he believes in modern medicine, but Chinese medicine has cured countless patients for thousands of years, he does not dare to think that Chinese medicine is useless, so at present, he does not dare to rely on the status of the shopping mall to directly cut off the import of ginseng in the Ming Dynasty.

However, although it is constantly and easily, it is completely okay to threaten Nurhachi.

According to Gao Shishi's statement in the letter, cutting off the ginseng trade will not be a big problem for the Ming Dynasty, but for you Jianzhou Zuowei, there is a risk of life and death. If you don't retreat, there will be no more Ming merchants in this year's border market to collect ginseng from Fushun Pass.

As for whether I can do it...... If you want to prove it, you might as well give it a try.

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PS: Excuse me, is there any other mention that the lifeblood of Nurhachi's rise is actually the ginseng trade?

PS again: This chapter takes some space to explain the ginseng myth, so this chapter is 800 words.