"There's another convoy. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info "A Balhu man cried out.

Everyone turned their attention to it, and sure enough, not far to the southeast, a large convoy was slowly moving forward.

The convoy was large and not fast, and on both sides of the road were a small number of caravan cavalry, few in number, and some men in various robes and robes armed with bows and arrows and muskets guarding the chariots.

More people walked, laughing and laughing as they went, and they seemed to be heard for miles.

There was also the low roar of cattle and horses, and these Han people not only drove a huge convoy of hundreds of vehicles, but also a considerable number of herds, including pigs, cows, sheep, chickens and other common herds.

Chen Zhuang was dumbfounded: This is a caravan, this is a standard immigration convoy!

"Hey, that man, come here!"

When Chen Zhuang was observing not far away, the people in the convoy were also observing these scattered Mongols.

In the fright, a large number of Balhu people ran away, not daring to approach the side of the road again.

Only a few people appeared at the edge of the road again with Chen Zhuang, and a few knights rode over to meet them, and when they were a few hundred paces apart, the riders on the opposite side began to shout in this direction.

Chen Zhuang was excited, and he felt that he was calling himself.

"Can you hear me?" One of the riders shouted, "Come this way, we have no hostility." ”

The Balhu people all looked at each other, no one dared to move, Chen Zhuang hesitated for a moment, turned his heart sideways, and rode forward to rush over.

"Ah, it's a Han?"

When he rode his horse to within 100 steps, Chen Zhuang's whole body collapsed.

If the other party is hostile, most of the firearms themselves will be finished, and several firearms will be released together, and the hit rate within 100 steps is still very high. If there were only one or two people, Chen Zhuang was not too nervous.

"Lao Tzu is Han!" Hearing the other party's slightly frivolous tone, Chen Zhuang was a little angry and shouted: "But the bow in Lao Tzu's hand is as good as the Mongols, do you want to try it?" ”

"Don't get me wrong!" The person on the other side was also a little nervous all of a sudden, and shouted: "We mean that we are a little happy, it is the Mongols, and the Han people are even better." ”

"What the hell are you going to do?"

"We don't have a lot of people to do chores, so we work every day, do some chores, and be guards when we encounter horse thieves and wolves." The people on the other side shouted: "As long as we want, we will eat and drink every day, and give six cents of silver a day!" ”

After that, several caravans retreated in unison, obviously worried that Chen Zhuang would turn his face and pursue.

These people spoke in Mongolian when they spoke, and later in Chinese, and a group of Balhu Mongols did not understand, so they gathered around and asked Chen Zhuang.

After Chen Zhuang said the meaning of the caravan, more than 100 Mongolians looked at each other and started to be stunned.

"Six cents of silver, how much is it worth?"

Half a day later, a Balhu nobleman cautiously asked.

"Well...... Chen Zhuang thought for a while and said, "I came here in the forty years of Wanli, and I haven't used much silver since then." At that time, in the territory of the Han people, six cents of silver was enough to buy more than ten catties of grain, two catties of pork, three catties of mutton, and if you were lucky, you could buy a whole chicken. ”

"What?" A Balhu man exclaimed, "Pork is more expensive than mutton?" The pork has a fishy smell, it is very delicious, and it is actually more expensive than mutton! ”

Chen Zhuang looked disdainful and said: "We Han people like to eat pork the most, and some people don't like mutton, so the price is not high." ”

In fact, the real reason is not so, because in the Tang and Song dynasties, the main meat of the Han people is also mutton, when people eat pork and do not know bloodletting, so the pork is very fishy, and later in the late Northern Song Dynasty to the Southern Song Dynasty, the cooking method of pork was solved, and there were cooking methods such as stir-frying and burning, and after the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, pork became the main source of meat.

The most important thing is that the pig is easy to raise, build a captive pig, do not need to put and do not eat any good things, leftovers plus pigweed can fatten a pig, but the sheep is to be stocked, the mainland is not better than the grassland, where to come from so many grasslands to herd sheep, in addition to a small amount of breeding, most of the mutton sources are from the mutual market, the number is also limited.

Since it is inconvenient to eat, there are fewer people who eat, and the price is not expensive......

"Ah, I see."

"There are people who don't like to eat mutton......"

A group of Balhu people let out an exclamation, but there was no strong resentment.

Several leaders got together, and after discussing for a while, their eyes lit up. Six cents of silver per person a day, that is, you can earn more than a dozen catties of food every day, a tea brick is cheap on three or four dollars of silver, a few days of hard work can also earn a tea brick, a jar of sauerkraut is the most expensive, in the past, Mongolians for a jar of sauerkraut to several sheep, now also have two taels of silver a jar, a jar of sauerkraut basically to save a winter, if you can earn more silver, you may also be able to buy more vegetables and tea bricks, used to spend a long winter.

"Tell them that we did it, and ask them how many people they want." A leader rode up to Chen Zhuang and spoke to Chen Zhuang with an unprecedented respectful attitude.

"I'll just go and talk about it." Chen Zhuang felt that an unprecedented opportunity was in front of him, and he persuaded the Mongols who wanted to go with him, and said, "I'll call you again after we have negotiated." ”

……

Wang Datong, Ma Chaowen and others were all sitting on a spacious four-wheeled car, with two rows of comfortable seats sitting opposite each other, walking quite smoothly on the newly built official road, and there was no bump at all.

There are some snacks and snacks on the car, as well as books to relieve boredom, in fact, each big proprietor has his own carriage, and Hutchison still takes care of the purchase needs of these big proprietors, and these big proprietors with a net worth of more than 100,000 taels are not bad at this point of silver.

This era is really the most glorious era of Ming commerce, that is, the so-called era of the budding capitalism, changed the Jiajing period a few decades ago when the net worth of tens of thousands of dollars is considered a big rich, a rich businessman with a net worth of more than 100,000 or 200,000 will never appear, the rich people of that era are still the gentry, like Xu Jie, Xu Ge Lao, who owns 200,000 acres of land in Songjiang Mansion, that is the rich man, the bureaucracy turns power into land and silver, into gold and antique jewelry, no businessman can have such a big wealth, because even if it is a pavilion Lao, he may not be able to keep it, Just like the Songjiang Xu family, Xu Jie's life was extremely embarrassing, because the wealth of the Xu family was so amazing that it exceeded the limit of what ordinary bureaucrats could tolerate.

Like Wang Datong, who is worth three or four hundred thousand taels of silver, in Songjiang during the Jiajing period, it is enough to buy tens of thousands of acres of land, and he is not an official gentry family without fame, this is the rhythm of being broken by people every minute, not to mention thinking about greater development in business and accumulating more wealth.

Even the Shanxi imperial merchants of the Qing Dynasty, they made a lot of money with monopoly methods in a cruel and oppressive political environment, but these Shanxi imperial merchants did not dare to use wealth to expand in the early and middle Qing Dynasty, they used silver to buy land, dig the cellar and turn the silver into silver nuggets and hide them in the cellar, after the middle period, the country opened, foreigners came in to establish a new business order, and the political pressure was gradually lifted, and the Shanxi ticket number began to appear, and began to develop to the whole country, before that, Shanxi merchants even if they were imperial merchants had to be cautious, money is not earned just by wanting to.

Only after the opening of the sea in the Ming Dynasty, the political incomparable easing, coupled with the prevalence of overseas trade, coupled with the influx of more than one-third of the world's silver, the wealth of the people, especially the merchant class, was explosive. At this rate of growth, simply buying land is no longer enough to satisfy these giants. In Jiangnan, workshops with hundreds or thousands of workers began to appear, and a large number of gentry and merchants invested in overseas trade and built ships to the sea. The local area was quite wealthy and accumulated a lot of wealth, because the increase in wealth led to the relative unity of the local area, and the tax inspectors sent by the Wanli Emperor several times were driven away by similar riots, or even killed. The fact that the wealth of the people was not used by the dynasty was a problem, but it also showed that commerce was indeed thriving under relaxed conditions.

The situation in the north is that the people are even more embarrassed because of natural disasters. From the late Wanli period to the Apocalypse, and then to Chongzhen, it has been at a level that the food and clothing line cannot reach, and commercially due to the prosperity of the capital and the horse market, the commercial trade in the north is centered on Jingshi and Zhangjiakou, relative to the agricultural disaster, the trade city of the north along the Beijing division to the Datong line to the north has not been greatly affected, and the strategy of closing the horse market has been completely offset by the feat of Hutchison going north to the grassland, after a period of confusion, all the big businessmen from Zhangjiakou to Beijing are keenly aware of the business opportunities, Before this time to the north, that is, in the years ago, there have been some big businessmen sent a tentative team to arrive at the trading city, due to the large number of Russian merchants, coupled with the Mongolian departments along the way of the high trade enthusiasm, which makes Wang Datong and others also confident, after the year began to prepare to go north, goods, personnel, vehicles, and communication with Hutchison, including security and supplies along the way, etc., to the end of March they began to set off from the Zhangjiakou area, into the grassland area soon had a fairly good official road, The convoy went north along the official road, because there were supply points and maintenance stations along the way, and the speed of the convoy was quite fast, until it gradually slowed down after entering the Mobei area.

At this time, the climate on the grassland is simply very good, and it is also an eye-opening for these people who come from the Han land, especially after entering Mobei, on one side is the endless green grassland, the scenery is beautiful and intoxicating, there are also mountainous and hilly areas and dense woodlands, the trees are very tall and dense, the breeze blows, the whole forest is gently swinging, the scenery is quite beautiful.

The rolling hills and mountains lead to the east, while the west begins to mix with the Gobi and desert.

For the merchants who came from Datong and Jingshi, they may have seen the grassland for a long time, but many people have seen this kind of desert and the Gobi region for the first time.

Lonely, spectacular, and shocking, these are the feelings that the scenery of Mobei gives to these merchants.

This route, in later generations, is actually a self-driving travel route, from the territory of China can reach Saiyin Shanda, that is, the grassland and the Gobi mixed area, but there are still five or six hundred miles to Ulaanbaatar is not an open area, the self-driving tour can only reach halfway to stop.

Even so, there are many people who participate in this kind of road trip, after all, this kind of pure and unpolluted, and a variety of terrain and landform scenery can not be seen anywhere.

Wang Datong, Ma Chaowen and others are also enjoying the wonders and expectations of the northbound trade, and slowly approaching the destination.