Li Feng Jian is located in Jinghai County, Tongzhou, and the reason why the salt prison is located here is because almost all the salt farms in Tongzhou are salt farms, and the thin land by the sea is not enough to grow grain.

Since ancient times, this is a salt farm, so the common people have been drying salt and fishing for a living, the salt farm is not run by the imperial court, the imperial court set up a salt supervisor only to manage these salt farms, and according to a fixed price to buy finished sea salt from the salt works.

This kind of salt certificate actually saved the imperial court a lot of manpower and costs for managing the salt farm, and the imperial court did not care about how the salt farm owners made money.

There is Jiangkou Town on the Yangtze River 20 miles southeast of Jinghai County, and the town is where the government-run boat yard is located.

According to Yang Huairen's understanding, there was a sea ban in the first half of the Northern Song Dynasty, and it was not until the Yuanfeng period of Shenzong that the sea trade was opened, which was only fifteen or sixteen years ago.

However, Yang Huairen also learned that the government-run shipyard has actually existed since the Qingli period of Renzong, and it has been glorious for 30 years, and it has not gradually declined until the last ten years.

These two things are obviously contradictory to each other, since there was a sea ban in the Great Song Dynasty from the Qingli period of Renzong to the Yuanfeng period of Shenzong, why can a shipyard specializing in manufacturing sea ships be brilliant?

On the contrary, after the sea ban was lifted, the shipyard gradually declined? Yang Huairen believes that there are two main reasons for the existence of this contradiction.

The first reason is that some historians confuse the sea ban in the Great Song Dynasty and the Han and Tang dynasties with the sea ban in the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Although the Ming Dynasty had Zheng He go to the West, it did not make the Ming Dynasty a maritime power, but began to gradually begin a comprehensive sea ban, and in the Qing Dynasty, it entered the era of seclusion.

In the previous Han, Tang, Song and Yuan dynasties, the so-called sea ban and the Ming and Qing dynasties had different meanings.

Some historians believe that many records of the official history and wild history record the promulgation of the law on the ban on the sea in the Song Dynasty, and it is true that the ban on the sea was not abolished until the second year of Emperor Yuanfeng.

However, this should be biased in the understanding of the text, because from the records of foreign history in the same period, such as the historical records of the Middle East at that time, a large number of merchant ships began to trade at sea during the reign of Renzong of the Great Song Dynasty.

This is also proved in the study of the general history of the world, whether it is part of the history of Southeast Asia or the history of India, Arabia and some countries in East Africa along the Indian Ocean, it is also proved that the Great Song Dynasty was a major maritime trade country at that time.

Even after the harvest year of Emperor Shenzong, the maritime merchant caravans of the Great Song Dynasty began to surpass the Great Food Merchants and became the largest group in maritime trade.

The largest flagship of Zheng He in the Ming Dynasty was a large ship of 5,000 materials, but among the large ships of the Song Dynasty maritime trade recorded in foreign history, there are more than seven ships with clear records of more than 5,000 materials.

All kinds of facts have proved that the sea trade of the Song Dynasty was very developed, and the so-called sea ban did not exist at all.

So if you understand it this way, if you look back and look at our history carefully, you will find that the sea ban of the Great Song Dynasty is not a ban on the sea, but a ban on people and goods.

The forbidden goods are very easy to understand, that is, certain materials, the imperial court is forbidden to carry out maritime trade, and there should be a similar reason to the list of prohibited goods for road trade at that time.

The prohibition of people means that in the early days of maritime trade, the imperial court only allowed designated merchants to conduct maritime trade, and set up a municipal shipping department for effective management, which was forbidden for the common people to trade at sea in private.

In other words, the imperial court's ban on maritime trade smuggling was relatively strict, but the normal maritime trade still brought a lot of taxes and fiscal revenue to the Song Dynasty.

The establishment of the City Shipping Division during the reign of Injong proves that there was maritime trade since the reign of Injong.

The second reason for the decline of the official shipyards of the imperial court is that the maritime merchants need a large number of ships for maritime trade, driven by economic benefits, and it is no longer enough to count on the government-run shipyards to solve the difficulty of the shortage of ships.

As a result, private shipyards began to appear, and under the large amount of capital investment, private shipyards poached a large number of shipbuilders from government-run shipyards at high prices.

In the end, the contradiction that the private shipyards are getting bigger and bigger, and the government-run shipyards are being crushed because of the lack of orders.

When Yang Huairen thought of this, he could understand that in the process of economic development in later generations, there was also a period of time when state-owned enterprises could not do private enterprises, and it was not uncommon for small private enterprises to do things that were left to sit down in large state-owned factories.

In fact, this is a normal phenomenon in the process of economic and social development, the survival of enterprises does not depend on the size of the enterprise, who has higher production efficiency, who can survive and continue to develop.

Yang Huairen and his entourage came to Li & Fung Shipyard this time to inspect, Yang Huairen's purpose is very simple, if the shipyard has not been abandoned, invest some money so that it can continue to build ships.

If it has been abandoned, it has to hand over the demand for ships to private shipyards to meet, and the reason why it is necessary to come to Li & Fung Shipyard to take a look is that Yang Huairen feels that a good shipyard is so abandoned, which is really a pity.

Shipbuilding is also a very important part of a big country, and in the future, if maritime trade is to develop in an all-round way, it needs a steady supply of sea ships, and it seems that it is not very beneficial to the country to completely hand over the task of shipbuilding to private shipyards.

When Yang Huairen came to Jiangkou Town, he found that Jiangkou Town was very large, but it was very depressed, there were many buildings in the town, but there were few people, most of the houses had been abandoned, and most of the shops on the main street had been closed.

The rest of the town center is still where some fishermen from nearby villages have appeared, exchanging dried fish from their homes for some rice and other things.

Yang Huairen showed regret on his face, and Cen Xiaonian hurriedly came out to explain, "The birth of Jiangkou Town is based on Li & Fung Shipyard.

At the peak of the Li & Fung Shipyard, there were thousands of shipbuilders working day and night in the shipyard, and their families lived in Jiangkou Town.

Tens of thousands of people live in the town, so it will naturally be very lively, and at that time, all kinds of maritime merchants also gathered here, urging the shipyard to step up their shipbuilding, and many small merchants saw the future prosperity of Jiangkou Town, and also came here to set up shops.

However, the good times only lasted for about 30 years, and after the complete abolition of the maritime ban law, the private shipbuilding industry was opened, and some maritime merchants gradually opened their own shipyards.

After that, shipbuilders were constantly poached from the Li Feng Jian Shipyard, not only the Li Feng Jian Shipyard went into loneliness, but even the originally prosperous Jiangkou Town became what it is now.

More than ninety percent of the people have moved away, and most of the people who remain here now are the old, weak, sick and disabled who do not want to leave, so Jiangkou Town has gradually lost much life. ”

Yang Huairen sighed, looked at the scattered passers-by in the town and the few stalls selling salted fish in the center of the town, and shook his head helplessly.