Since the demolition of the walls of several squares in the outer city and the west city last year, after the first month of this year, the streets in the inner city have also begun to demolish the square walls. After the wall of Nanju Xianfang was demolished, the houses behind the wall suddenly became roofs facing the street.

With the continuous development of industry and commerce in Beijing, the rent of shops in Beijing is also becoming more expensive day by day. Because it is located in the commercial center, some houses facing the street have set off a trend of converting them into shops.

One day in mid-April, when Jiang Chaozong and his two servants were looking for a suitable house in Nanju Xianfang and were about to rent it as their own shop, it suddenly began to rain.

The climate in spring is how unpredictable, just sunny weather, suddenly there is a light rain.

When Jiang Chaozong went out with his servants, he didn't bring rain gear because he saw that the sky was good, after all, the bamboo, wood, oil, paper umbrella was a very bulky thing.

The three people wearing cloth shoes are obviously not suitable for walking on the streets on rainy days, especially Dongzhimen Street, which is being expanded into a concrete pavement, and the streets become muddy when it rains.

The three masters and servants hiding under the canopy of the shop were searching around, trying to find a shop that sold rain gear, but the shop was not found, and Jiang Chaozong found a teahouse on the side.

He looked up at the sky and felt that the rain had not only not become lighter, but had the meaning of continuous. So he couldn't help but say to the two servants: "Look at this day, this rain will not stop for a while, anyway, it is almost noon now, let's go to the teahouse opposite to sit down, and wait for the rain to stop." ”

The two servants naturally did not object to their master's proposal, and hurriedly escorted Jiang Chaozong into the teahouse opposite.

After entering the teahouse, a guy suddenly greeted the three of them, and while greeting the three of them warmly, this guy handed over a clean towel and wiped the water traces on Jiang Chaozong's body.

Without waiting for this guy to ask, Jiang Chaozong was already familiar with the way and ordered: "We just take shelter from the rain for the time being, just join in the fun below, and don't sit down." A pot of carrot, a platter of three-color fruits, and three bowls of rotten meat noodles are served. ”

The teahouse guy retrieved the towels that the three of them had used, agreed with a smile on his face, and led the three of them down the corridor to the west of the hall and sat down on the patio.

When the guy left, Jiang Chaozong had the leisure to look at the environment of this teahouse. The ancestors of the Jiang Dynasty were from Nanchang, Jiangxi, but since the grandfather's generation, they have settled in Hangzhou to do the cloth business.

When his grandfather left his hometown and went to Songjiang and Hangzhou to do business, he was just a merchant who picked up all his belongings and walked the streets and alleys shouting for business, and the goods he bought each time were only 4 or 50 horses of Songjiang coarse cloth.

But by the time it came to his father's hands, the Jiang family cloth shop opened at the foot of Wu Mountain was already a medium-sized shop that sold thousands of pieces of cloth a year, nearly a thousand silks, and made a profit of thousands of taels.

However, to this extent, the business of the Jiang family cloth store has almost reached its peak. After all, in addition to some regular temple fairs and markets, the main source of customers for the fixed shops in this era is the residents near the shops.

In the era when there was no public transportation, shopping on the street was not a pleasure, but a real necessity of daily life.

Therefore, if Jiangjia Cloth Company wants to continue to expand its business scale, it is to open branches in other regions. However, Jiang Chaozong's father was very satisfied with the current situation of his shop, and he did not have much ambition, and he only had one eldest son and three daughters of Jiang Chaozong, so he was reluctant to let his eldest son go to other places to do business.

So the family followed his wishes and lived in peace in their own shop. However, last year, there was a big flood in Zhejiang, which just washed away a batch of goods on the road of his family, and lost hundreds of taels.

The flood not only submerged half of the Hangjiahu Plain, but also once filled the vicinity of Hangzhou, and many fields outside the city were not harvested. This greatly weakened the consumption power of the people of Hangzhou, and the business of the Jiang family cloth store naturally plummeted.

Jiang Chaozong's father was in a bad mood because of this, and he also had a serious illness. At this time, he also had to follow the advice of his eldest son, let Jiang Chaozong go to Beijing to buy a batch of Beijing standard cloth, and by the way, bring some local products from Hangzhou to Beijing to sell, trying to find a new way.

Although Jiang Chaozong is 25 years old, it is the first time in his life that he has walked such a long way. Previously, he had accompanied his father to Songjiang to buy goods as far as possible, and although the journey was hard, he didn't feel too tired because of his strong curiosity.

Of course, his father was willing to let him go to Beijing, and in addition to being accompanied by two reliable servants who had grown up in his own house, the imperial court abolished the tax card on the canal, and the newly established bank in Hangzhou issued paper money that could be used in circulation in both the north and south of the river.

The former allowed the merchants to reduce the trouble on the road, while the latter did not have to worry about carrying too much silver taels and being targeted by bandits on the way.

Compared to paper money, silver is not only heavier, but also larger. Experienced thieves can roughly tell if they are carrying a large amount of silver on the road by looking at the footsteps of pedestrians or the rut marks of a vehicle.

The paper money is different, even if it is thousands of taels, a package will be all carried on the body. The only thing to worry about is whether the banknotes will depreciate as quickly as the treasure money.

However, the banknotes have been used in Hangzhou for nearly half a year, and there are no problems that citizens are worried about. For Jiang Chaozong's father, his son's safety is much more valuable than a few thousand taels of silver.

Therefore, he did not hesitate to exchange 2,000 yuan notes and privately handed them over to Jiang Chaozong to bring into the capital to buy. On the bright side, it was Jiang Chaozong who brought a boatload of Hangzhou native products worth 3 or 4 hundred taels to Beijing to try to sell them.

In addition to the 2,000 yuan purchase money that his father privately handed over to him, his mother and wife took out their own private money, for fear that he would be short of money when he walked away. Coupled with the little savings Jiang Chaozong had saved, the cash he brought to the capital was almost more than 3,000.

Hangzhou's native products are silk, tea, and dried bamboo shoots, and most of the goods carried by Jiang Chaozong are silk, although these silks are carefully selected by him and his father.

But after arriving in the capital, Jiang Chaozong found that these silks were not easy to sell. Because the silk shipped by the Jiangnan Weaving Bureau set up by the Inner Government in Suzhou was not only of good quality, but also not much higher than the price he bought in Hangzhou.

It's just that the Jiangnan Weaving Bureau used to be exclusively for the interior, and now it has not been fully adapted to civilian use. Therefore, the demand for silk in the capital is underestimated, and the amount of silk sent is too small, but it has not yet impacted the pricing of silk in the capital.

However, Jiang Chaozong inquired a little and learned that the Jiangnan Weaving Bureau transported the silk to Beijing by sea, and the low price of sea transportation was really not comparable to his batch of silk transported to Beijing through the canal.

And now a shipping company has been set up to open a ship of more than 400 tons every month between Tianjin and Shanghai. According to the grapevine, in the second half of the year, it will be changed to one every half month, and next year, it will be one every seven days.

After hearing the news, Jiang Chaozong quickly disposed of the silk in his hand at a lower price. At the same time, he also realized that with the capital of the Jiang family's cloth company, there was no way to compete with the Jiangnan Weaving Bureau in the silk trade.

But fortunately, he found another way, that is, the people of the capital like to drink tea, and they like to drink fragrant flower tea, especially jasmine tablets in the south. The tea leaves and dried bamboo shoots he brought with him were unexpectedly sold at a good price.

Although jasmine tablets are famous for the Longtuanzhu ** tea produced in Fujian, after several tea products in the capital have passed the ** tea produced in Hangzhou he brought, they think that Hangzhou flower tea is not inferior to Fujian flower tea.

The undulating mountains around West Lake, coupled with the suitable climate, have always been a place for tea production. The West Lake Shifeng Longjing arose in the Song Dynasty and was famous in the Ming Dynasty. Brewing Shifeng Longjing Mingqian tea with Hupao spring water is the Hangzhou double unique that is respected by Hangzhou literati.

However, at this time, Longjing tea, in the eyes of literati and scholars, is only called Longjing tea produced by the eighteen old tea trees in front of the Hugong Temple at the foot of Shifeng Mountain, and as for the tea produced in other places, it can only be called Hangzhou tea, not Longjing tea.

Therefore, although Hangzhou tea is good, it has not created its own brand, but only sells it as loose tea. The best bud tea in the capital is 015 yuan a catty, and ** tea can also sell the price of bud tea. In Hangzhou, the best ** tea is only 6 or 7 cents a catty.

Jiang Chaozong immediately realized that if he opened a tea house in Beijing and specialized in selling ** tea, it was really promising. Because he found that the people of the capital were completely able to accept the price of ** tea, and did not buy less because of the high price.

Therefore, he ran out in high spirits in the past two days, wanting to open a store in Nanju Xianfang, where shops are gathered, and open a tea house. He had already calculated carefully, and after he sold the goods he brought to Beijing, he had nearly 4,000 yuan on hand.

The wholesale price of standard cloth in Beijing is 75 yuan per 100 horses. And he inquired that the shipping cost from Tianjin to Shanghai was about 5 yuan per ton of cotton cloth. If you add the freight from Beijing to Tianjin and Shanghai to Hangzhou, it will cost about 12 yuan per ton of cotton cloth.

Transporting a ton of cotton cloth without packaging is about 425 horses, and he plans to buy 4,250 pieces of Beijing standard cloth, plus the freight is 33,075 yuan. In this case, he still has 678 yuan left in his hand, which can be used to rent the store.

After the first lunar month, the Gyeongseong City Hall reformed the rent calculation method for government stores and adopted a contract term system.

The private shopkeepers in the Nanju Xianfang area quickly caught up with the pace of the imperial court, because the new rent was calculated in a more cost-effective way for the shopkeepers.

For example, the current Nanju Xianfang storefront is 05 yuan per square meter per year, and a 100-square-meter store is 50 yuan for one year.

However, most of the houses in Nanju Xianfang are two-storey houses or large houses with yards, which are often more than 5 or 600 square meters, which means that the annual rent is nearly 300 yuan.

Just a year ago, such a house would not have been worth more than 100 yuan. Even half a year ago, the house price here did not exceed 600 yuan.

But after the first month, it is almost a price a day, and now a set of Nanju Xianfang street storefronts has exceeded 1,000 yuan. Elsewhere in the inner city, prices have tripled at best.

However, Nanju Xianfang is a commercial area, and the rest of the area is a residential area, which is not suitable for opening a store. Jiang Chaozong chose for a few days, but he still couldn't make up his mind. He thinks that it is more cost-effective to rent a house like this than to buy a house and open a shop, but in this case, the money is insufficient.

He was sipping tea while thinking. A middle-aged man in a robe walked up to the small platform on the north side of the teahouse hall, greeted the tea guests from all over the world, knocked on the shocking wood, and then said: "Today, I will read you a piece of news, and tell me how much this silver is worth..."