"The price of the four books of the Chang Gung Pavilion is 03 taels, the annotations of the four books of the Nanjing large-character book are 05 taels, the eight strands, Cheng Wen, and the ink scroll are mostly in 1-2 yuan and silver, and the Jianyang version of the new tune Wanqu Ivy is only 012 taels..."

Fan Wencheng stood in front of the bookshelf with glowing eyes, browsing through the past one by one, feeling a little unaware of what year it was. In the past few days, in addition to traveling around the capital and asking about the price of people's livelihood, he is looking for bookstores everywhere and preparing to buy some books to send back to Shenyang.

For the Ming Dynasty in Guannai, Liaodong, which had been ravaged by Nurhachi for nearly ten years, had basically become barbaric. Especially in the last years of Nurhachi's life, he was probably a little confused in his head. Contrary to the policy of recruiting and appeasing the large Han families in Liaodong where the army was raised, he instead used massacre methods against the Han gentry and scholars.

Nurhachi's backsliding behavior immediately gave these Han gentry and scholars a hard slap in the face. You must know that the reason why Nurhachi was able to become the Heavenly Mandate Khan of Houjin from Li Chengliang's house slave is due to the contributions of these Han gentry and scholars.

It was with the help of these Han gentry that Nurhachi was able to break the trade blockade of the Ming generals and exchange ginseng and mink for a large amount of supplies from the Ming mainland, so that he could maintain himself in the old forests of Liaodong and conquer other savage tribes and become stronger.

And it was these gentlemen who inquired about the intelligence of the Ming army for him and won over the generals of the Ming army, so Nurhachi was able to repeatedly let those Ming generals suddenly defect on the battlefield, which hit the morale of the Ming army, and thus defeated the Ming army.

It is precisely because of the submission of these Han gentry and scholars that the Jianzhou Jurchens, whose number is less than one-twentieth of the Han people in Liaodong, can fight against the Ming army while enslaving millions of Han people in Liaodong and providing food, weapons, armor and manpower for his anti-Ming war.

Although these Han gentry and scholars witnessed Nurhachi's massacre of civilians in Liaodong, they never felt that this butcher's knife would fall on them. Because they realized that without their help, this Jurchen slave chief who came out of the old forests of Liaodong could not rule such a vast land in Liaodong and many Han people.

However, for Nurhachi, there was not only one choice, if the Jurchens could not rule so many Han Chinese, then it would be enough to kill the Han people so that they could rule the Jurchens.

Under his frenzied slaughter, the Han people in Liaodong fell below a million people, a full four-fifths of the population, while the Jurchens expanded the population to 3 or 400,000 by conquering the ethnic minorities in Liaodong everywhere. The ratio of Han people in Liaodong to ethnic minorities is only about 1:1.

The population ratio of the Han people to the Jurchens is only 3:1. It was only at this time that Nurhachi raised his butcher's knife and pointed it at the Han gentry and the scholars among them.

In Fan Wencheng's view, Nurhachi's behavior is simply crazy, and it can be said that he has lost his mind. But under Nurhachi's butcher's knife, the local Han people in Liaodong have basically been swept away, and they can no longer control the Han people in Liaodong.

Those who were able to survive under Nurhachi's butcher's knife were either the Ming generals who were carried into the Eight Banners, or the small landlords of the poor families who had little power. Nurhachi used the simplest and most barbaric means to directly smash the Han gentry class in the Later Jin Dynasty.

Since then, the only political power in the Later Jin Dynasty has been left with the military aristocratic alliance of the Jurchens and the Mongols, and the power of the Liaodong Han gentry who was originally a pillar of the Later Jin State has been wiped out.

However, before Nurhachi could kill the Ming army in the Later Jin country, he died. Huang Taiji, who inherited his throne, once again supported the Han gentry and the group of generals in terms of ideas and the need to balance domestic politics.

This post-Jin Sibeile, who was not liked by Nurhachi, can be regarded as completely overthrowing the path designed by Nurhachi for the Jurchens to establish a country. In fact, since the Han staff betrayed Nurhachi, the Jurchen Heavenly Mandate Khan knew that in Liaodong he could assimilate any ethnic minority into a Jurchen, but he could not turn a Han Chinese into a Jurchen.

After realizing this, what Nurhachi wanted to do was to completely separate the Liaodong region from the Han cultural circle and become a country with Jurchen as the main body. But apparently Huang Taiji didn't think so, he wanted to be the emperor of China, not the Great Khan of the Later Jin.

Of course, apart from the father and son, neither the Jurchens, the Mongols, nor the Han people understood what the father and son were thinking.

As for the Liaodong gentlemen such as Fan Wencheng, after escaping from Nurhachi's butcher's knife, Huang Taiji was a little more tolerant of them, and these Liaodong gentlemen immediately felt that the new Houjin Khan was truly the person to whom the destiny of heaven belonged and was worthy of their allegiance. In later generations, the behavior of such people was called Stockholm syndrome.

For the gentlemen of Liaodong who were loyal to Huang Taiji, the first priority was naturally to restore the sage learning in Liaodong and prevent the Later Jin from being pointed out as a barbarian country by the Ming State. Only the Houjin, who also respected Confucianism and was willing to defend the famous religion, was qualified to compete with the Ming for the right to rule China, and would not be sworn to resist by the gentlemen of the Ming Dynasty.

However, Liaodong has experienced many wars, and was slaughtered by Nurhachi before his death, and now there are no more than 500 scholars in Liaodong who are still alive, and even fewer craftsmen who can print and make paper.

Although last year, Erbel Amin attacked North Korea last year and took many craftsmen from North Korea to start a paper workshop in Houjin. However, the lack of books in the Houjin could not piece together a complete set of sage classics to educate the people of the Houjin.

Therefore, Fan Wencheng secretly entered the customs this time, in addition to finding out the inside story of the Ming Kingdom, he also wanted to get some classics from the capital of the Ming Kingdom and go back for the purpose of educating the children of the Jin relatives and nobles.

Beijing is the capital of the Ming Kingdom, and the bookstore in the capital is not full of sweat, at least it has everything, which is the mental construction that Fan Wencheng has done when he went to Beijing.

Before he came, he had already inquired that most of the bookstores in Beijing were concentrated in the Zhengyangmen area, and there were also a small number of bookstores in the Xuanwumen, Chongwenmen, Longfu Temple, and Huguo Temple. Of course, the most famous book market is the Chenghuangmiao Book Market in the west of the city, which is open on the first, fifteenth and twenty-fifth days of the Lunar New Year.

But after arriving in the capital, he heard that a Zhonghua bookstore had opened in the capital, which far exceeded the scale of the Chenghuangmiao Book Market. And opposite the bookstore is the Beijing Library, which was only established at the beginning of the year, so that people can enter and read books for free.

He didn't care at the time, after all, the current bookstore can have 3 or 4 hundred kinds of books, which is already considered abundant. And if there are more than 3,000 kinds of books, you can boast that all the books in the world are in the workshop.

After all, most of today's bookstores are bookstores and bookshops, which means that most books are carved out of their own homes and not purchased from others. After all, only by engraving books can you make money, and very few bookstores are willing to sell books on credit.

After all, the books in the bookstore are all purchased from others, and if they can't be sold, they will be smashed in their own hands. If you engrave the book yourself, not only the cost will be greatly reduced, but if the book sells well, you can reprint it yourself.

Therefore, if a private bookstore has more than 3,000 kinds of books, even if the owner of the bookstore takes Cheng Wen and ink scrolls to make up the numbers, the stereotypes saved in this bookstore are already a great wealth.

When Fan Wencheng was still young, he heard his father mention that the world's engraved books are based on the essence of Jinling, Xin'an, and Wuxing, and they are no less than the Song version. And Fujian Jianyang Bookstore edition paper is the most evil, the worst thing is that whenever the price of the good books engraved in the provinces is high, even if it is engraved, the number of volumes is the same, and the article is subtracted, so that people do not know. Although the price of half of the goods is stopped, it is very harmful.

Therefore, when Fan Wencheng ran to Nanxunfang with great interest and stepped into the compound with the plaque of Zhonghua Book Company, he did not expect that he understood for the first time what it means to be vast.

In the courtyard of the whole four entrances, except for the last one, the library is not open to the public, and the rooms in the other three courtyards are full of bookshelves. With a sense of pilgrimage, he washed his hands at the sink in the courtyard before cruising step by step in the sea of books.

After talking to the staff of the bookstore, he learned that the Chung Hwa Book Company has a collection of 20,000 or 30,000 titles, totaling more than 120,000 volumes. The Beijing Library on the opposite side has more than 40,000 kinds of books and 200,000 volumes in the palace, except for the Yongle Grand Dictionary and the Song and Yuan Dynasties and some rare books, common books are among them.

Fan Wencheng looked at the books on the wall and cabinets, and felt like he was about to burst into flames. The books in this Zhonghua Book Company are different from those bookstores outside, and there are very few Cheng Wen and ink scrolls to deal with the imperial examination, and there are very few crude essays on gods and demons and operas.

Most of the books here are carefully selected rare books, and even the Jianyang carved books are of good quality. Moreover, Fan Wencheng found that in addition to opera, essays and other books, most of them came from foreign bookstores, and most of the books on classics and history, astronomy and geography, physics, chemistry, and natural sciences were refined by Zhonghua Book Company.

The paper of these engravings is white and dense, and the handwriting is legible, without any traces of contamination. The quality exceeds the best cotton paper engraving, but the price is low and comparable to the Jianyang book, and each volume is only between one and three cents.

He also quietly asked the clerk, and the clerk told him happily: "Originally, the self-engraved books in our store were less than 3 percent, but now it has increased to 7 percent, and in the future, except for some miscellaneous books, other books will be replaced by the self-engraved books of our bookstore."

Our bookstore uses movable type printing, and has improved the printing press, which is a good paper newly developed by Tianjin Paper Workshop.

Other bookstores carve a good board at least a penny of silver, the cheapest Fujian bamboo paper is 2 points 6 per 100 sheets, and the most expensive Jiangxi cotton paper is 4 points 2 per 100 sheets.

However, the cost of our bookstore's self-printed copies is less than half of theirs, but the quality is much better than that of Jinling rare books. In addition, our self-engraved books have all been refined by Hanlin Bachelors, as long as we sell one, there will be one less wrong and shoddy book on the market.

Therefore, even if the price is cheaper, you will not lose money. But don't the people of the world benefit from this? ”

Fan Wencheng looked at the clerk in amazement, he didn't think that such a person in the market would actually understand such a big truth.

The clerk looked at Fan Wencheng staring at him, and said embarrassedly: "This is what the villain said when he listened to the small talk of the president of our family, not what the villain came up with." ”

Fan Wencheng asked curiously, "Who is the president of your family?" ”

The clerk proudly straightened his chest and said, "The president of our family is Huang Kunwu, who is known as "Mr. Haihe". The president was invited by His Majesty to run the Beijing Library and Zhonghua Book Company with Mr. Chen Meigong, Mao Zijin and Fan Lugong, and revised the collection of books in the palace, preparing to start collecting books from all over the world from next year, and establishing a set of ancient and modern book catalogs for the Ming Dynasty, which is a grand event for readers..."

Looking at the clerk's rather proud appearance, Fan Wencheng suddenly felt a little uneasy in his heart, he moved his gaze to the bookshelf on the side, changed the topic and said: "A concise history reader of China, is this Mr. Yu Shan's new work?" ”