Hui'an Province, Yangzhou Prefecture.

Both Huai and Huai have transferred salt to make Feng Liang and Lord Feng have been very carefree recently.

Yangzhou's rich land and the land of fish and rice can be called every inch of land, but Fengfu covers an area of more than 80 acres.

There are four or five rockeries and ponds in the house, and one should be located on the edge of the pond or hidden in the vines and pothos.

It was the late autumn season, the south of the Yangtze River had just passed the summer, the climate was very pleasant, and groups of handsome maids carried precious plates and jade delicacies to a two-story attic deep in the back garden.

In the attic on the second floor, Feng Liang, who was about fifty years old, was lying ajar on top of the soft collapse by the window, enjoying the kneading of a young woman who was obviously not of Han origin.

This foreign woman is less than ten years old, her skin is fair like an autumn cloud, her tulle is almost transparent, and her slender figure is faintly visible, which makes the young man feel blood gushing when he looks at it.

Tap ...... You clumsy idiot! Feng Liang kicked the foreign woman on the bed away and scolded.

The outsiders are really vulgar, don't look at this woman with a chic appearance and reserved personality, but as soon as she arrives on the bed, she looks like a tiger wolf.

But Feng Liang is fifty years old, and he overindulges in his desires on weekdays, so he is already overwhelmed by the words below.

The woman wanted to help him, but after some fiddling, she was stunned and didn't stand up.

Feng Liang was depressed, so he had no choice but to vent his anger with this foreign vassal woman to cover up her incompetence.

This damn Wu Zuoren must have deliberately humiliated the old man, right?

Hmph, don't want to get a cent of salt from the old man this year! Feng Liang hated the way.

Recently, the salt mill of Lianghuai has a new batch of salt for sale, and the salt merchants in the Lianghuai area have heard the news and moved, and there are salt merchants from all over the world who come to visit almost every day with large bags and small bags of gifts.

The housekeeper of the Zhang family in Luzhou sent 10,000 taels of silver, and the Chen family in Taizhou sent a precious painting of Wu Daozi in the Tang Dynasty, which was exactly what Feng conscience wanted.

Born as a scholar, who doesn't like to collect antique calligraphy and paintings? What's more, it is a masterpiece of the Tang Dynasty painting saint Wu Daozi.

And only to Wu Zuoren, a local salt merchant in Yangzhou, who thinks that the silver sent every year is too vulgar and tasteless, so he spent a high price to buy a beauty from the coast of Fujian who is said to be from the Netherlands.

These days, Feng Liang is so cool that he is boundless, in addition to casually disposing of the matter of salt administration, he is quietly waiting for salt merchants from all over the world to come to give gifts, in two words, it is very cool!

Daming has been strictly investigating corruption since last year, and the reason why Feng Liang dared to commit crimes against the wind was because of Yuan Guifei in the palace.

Chongzhen has been worried about state affairs all his life, even the concubines are rarely accepted, and there are only eight or nine concubines in the harem in the past 20 years, and now Chongzhen is still by his side, except for Queen Zhou, it is this Yuan Guifei.

Yuan Guifei gave birth to a daughter and died young, and has been living a thrifty life with Queen Zhou for ten years, and Chongzhen feels guilty and loves her.

And this Feng Liang is Yuan Guifei's uncle, and he relied on Yuan Guifei's name to climb to the position of the salt transport envoy of the two Huaidu, and officials at all levels in Yangzhou know the inside story, plus Lao Feng is very good at drilling camps, and he is willing to spend money, which is really a tyrant in Yangzhou.

To say that the position of this salt transport envoy is fat and lacking in all dynasties.

Since the Spring and Autumn Period, salt is the patent of the monopoly of Z government, and the descendants of China do not know the composition of salt, but they know that people who lack salt will have weak limbs and cannot work.

These indispensable things for all the people have been paid more and more attention by the dynasties, after all, who in power does not want to control the people under their rule?

At the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, Guan Zhong set a precedent in history and brought salt and iron under the control of the imperial court, and anyone who dared to make private or sell them would be sentenced to death.

Not to mention things related to national security such as iron, just the salt administration can increase a large amount of revenue for the imperial court, and the salt is really the oldest 'complex currency'.

Of course, the Ming Dynasty is no exception, but all kinds of taxes seem to have changed the taste of the Ming Dynasty, taking the weak Song Dynasty as an example, its population is about 60 million, and the people have been slaughtered several times in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, and the population is about 60 million.

With the same population, the salt production of the Ming Dynasty was almost twice that of the Weak Song, but what?

The weak Song Dynasty was a soldier, and its ability to engage in economy was to throw off the Ming Dynasty ten or one hundred streets, and the Song Dynasty could get at least 60 million yuan a year from salt, and by the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, the revenue of the salt administration even reached 80 percent of the fiscal revenue.

What about Da Ming? The output is twice that of people, but even in the early Ming Dynasty, when the national strength was at its peak, the income of the salt administration was only three million taels, and in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, it was even fewer, three million versus sixty million, what order of magnitude is this?

Moreover, the salt of the Ming Dynasty was more expensive than that of the Song Dynasty, and it stands to reason that the income of the imperial court was higher, so the question is, where did the massive salt government income go?

Answer: Officials, businessmen and relatives of the emperor!

Zhu Chongba hated greed to the extreme, and set the salaries of officials extremely low, which can be said to be unparalleled in China for 5,000 years.

But officials naturally want to live a good life after ten years of bitter cold, where does the money come from? Covet!

A considerable number of nobles and officials have stretched out their hands to the salt administration, how to stretch it? Sell salt, get kickbacks, and take bribes!

In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the imperial court was tired of coping with internal and external troubles, and it was not cost-effective to transport grain to the border gates, so it called on merchants from all over the country to transport grain for military needs.

In return, merchants could get a guide of salt for transporting a stone of grain, which was to open the Chinese law, that is, by the end of the Ming Dynasty, the imperial court could get less tax from the salt policy.

The salt merchants bore the consumption of the grain journey, and the people naturally paid for the silver in the end, because the salt of the Ming Dynasty was more expensive than that of other dynasties, and the people of the late Ming Dynasty were already poor, and those who could not afford salt abounded.

However, the annual output of salt is limited, corruption, private sales and the opening of the law, in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the salt has been sold for 20 years, or even 30 years later.

Salt became a national debt, that is to say, the salt merchant became a creditor of the imperial court, Lao Tzu died, and the son automatically inherited the salt in his hand, and the children and grandchildren were endless.

This is a ridiculous joke!

In the forty-fifth year of Wanli, the Ming court finally couldn't support it, so it played a scoundrel and directly abolished the expired salt citation.

In the past three hundred years, officials have participated in the fat cake of the Ming Salt Administration, accounting for less than 10%, and the rest are in the hands of the emperor's relatives.

It was only after the ravages of Chongzhen and Liu Hongjian that two-thirds of the clans and nobles of the Ming Dynasty were dismissed, and the actual controllers of the salt administration returned to the imperial court and returned to the hands of various salt envoys.

Feng Liang is one of the koi fish.

There are six transportation divisions in the world, but the two Huaiyun divisions are male, the business stove is in the depths, and the salt is rich in the southeast, and the national needs and border salaries are relied on, and half of them are out of here, which can be seen.

"Master, Qi Yao from Taizhou sent an invitation to the housekeeper, and wanted to invite the master to Yangzhou Heavenly and Earthly Restaurant for a banquet."

PS: I have read a lot of information about the salt administration, and I think it is necessary for you to understand the history of the salt we eat every day, and I hope you will not get bored.

PS: After pushing a book "Han Disciple" as Emperor Guangwu, Liu Lian, the patriarch of the Han family, can't let his younger brother Liu Ye be decadent because of women, for the sake of big and small Qiao, for his younger brother, and even for the sake of the Han Dynasty, see how Liu Lian bullied Lu Su, evil Zhou Yu, Dousun Ce, and pointed at the Central Plains...