Li Su had lunch at the mansion when he entertained Lu Su. The two brothers talked about a lot of disharmonious topics before sending Lu Su away.

As soon as Lu Su left, someone from the provincial governor's office came to invite Li Su, saying that it was Liu Bei's summoning, and he wanted to talk to him about some plans for the affairs of the Southern Central Committee.

Li Su knew as soon as he heard that Liu Bei drank too much yesterday, so he was awake now.

It’s still him and a gentleman like Lu Su who drinks relatively modestly.

However, he happened to discuss this matter with Liu Bei, so he went as a car. Anyway, the prefect and the prefect are very close to each other and there is no need to ride a horse.

"Boya is here? I've been drinking too much last night. I won't drink it when I'm talking about it today. I'll learn from you, change the tea, come and pour tea." Liu Bei greeted and ordered the maid to serve tea.

The maid immediately poured two bowls of tea with fried tea with finished green and fried tea, chrysanthemum and honey, each bowl of tea.

Tea in the late Han Dynasty is still considered a medicine, and some people drink it, but they all add salt, pepper, ginger, garlic and other spices, which are even more terrible than sauerkraut fish soup.

In the words of Lu Yu, who wrote the "Tea Classic" in later generations, the method of drinking tea from the late Han Dynasty to the early Northern and Southern Dynasties was simply "ditch wastewater", which wasted the lightness and elegance of the tea.

Therefore, this way of drinking sweet-sipedly was obviously invented two months after Li Su entered Shu. Shu was the main source of wild tea at the end of the Han Dynasty.

In fact, Li Su wanted to make tea with bitter taste, and he was used to drinking it himself. But he also knew that the cultivation of aesthetic interests and cultural atmosphere in the upper class was not overnight, and no one would like bitter things as soon as he came up.

In history, bitter tea was able to be carried forward because Buddhism was introduced to China. Hundreds of years of cultural influence linked bitter tea with nobleness and indifference, and repeatedly emphasized its cultural tone. Even so, it took one or two hundred years from the Liang Dynasty in the Southern Dynasty to the late Sui Dynasty and the early Tang Dynasty to stabilize the cultural tone.

Now that there is no such condition, Li Su doesn't want to mess with things. He just wants to make it simple and find a way to change the salty and spicy Evil Tea to sweet and bitter taste.

Just like the British and other Western navigators, they came into contact with Eastern tea in the early days. Due to transportation conditions, they finally got fermented black tea, which was far less fragrant than fried green tea, so their early black tea was added with sugar, which was similar to the recipe for drinking coffee.

In the 1980s, Orientals had just opened their homeland and were unable to drink bitter coffee at the beginning, so they also had to add sugar cubes and milk. After drinking for ten or twenty years, the petty bourgeoisie became more and more pretentious and had to drink American style and concentrate.

This shows that for those who cannot accept pure bitterness, giving them sweet and bitterness first is the most reliable cultural induction.

For those who are pragmatic like Li Su, he has to use the advantages of tea production in Shu to promote tea culture and increase export trade. Of course, he has to use such a useful method.

Just now, Liu Bei and the others were led by Li Su and then they started to get into the trap. However, only the top rich nobles can add honey. If they change to some officials and scholars who resist, they can only drink sweet tea with coarse brown sugar.

Drinking honey flower tea, Liu Bei followed the topic last night and asked some details of the operation: "Boya, I thought about it later. Since the South Central Land must be harvested every year, it will take the army to be used after the autumn harvest. Shouldn't it be time to recruit corvee and build a large-scale construction project?

The winter in the north is too cold, and the imperial court does not recruit corvee much. It would be a pity not to recruit troops when they arrive in Nanzhong. In order to use troops after next autumn, how should we rectify and prepare for the dispatch of troops in the past few months?"

Liu Bei was inspired by Li Su yesterday and said that he would not delay the work of the people before the autumn harvest in various counties in Shu, so he was reluctant to delay this winter.

Li Sumeng had thought about this problem vaguely. Seeing that Liu Bei attached importance to it, he also made a thorough review. He thought carefully about half a bowl of honey flower tea and said:

"It is also necessary to prepare for assimilation, win over Nanzhong, rectify transportation, and add military farms. The model can imitate Guoyuan, Cheng Bing and others set up shipping transit points along the Jialing River in Hanzhong County and Bajun to rectify dangerous shoals.

I think that if you want to collect corvee this winter, the focus will be on the Jade County, which is at the junction of Jianwei County and Zhudi County, and the shipping of the Yangtze River from Jade Road to the south, to Zhudi, Tanglang and other counties in Zhudi County, to rectify some dangerous shoals that are prone to stranding and remove some dangerous reefs.

In addition, for the river sections that are really not easy to ship, military farm towns are also set up to allow local people to live in. When they encounter fleets, they can perform labor service to help load and unload goods, and tow empty ships to swim the beach and cross the beach.

In this way, it is no problem to allow water transport goods to reach the southernmost part of Zhuti County from the Nai Road. In this way, you can reach Kunming and Dianchi Lake through short-distance land transportation and water transport through Wei County and Muma County.

Although Yueli County in the south central area is close to the heart of the three Pingyuan counties, the roads are actually difficult and dangerous, and there are mountains everywhere, but there is no strong value for winning over and developing. Therefore, I think the focus of our pursuit in the next few years is to follow the Yangtze River, spread water, and pass through Jianning County to control Yongchang County."

Li Su also said this while pointing at the map to explain to Liu Bei.

Thanks to Li Su as a successful person in his previous life, there were many reports of tour groups that avoided the cold in Kunming and Dali in Xishuangbanna. In addition, he was familiar with geography, so Li Su was very clear about the difficulty of transportation in the southern central area, and it was not easy to simply look at the distance.

At least, although Yunnan is further south than Guizhou, it is much easier to walk from Sichuan to Yunnan than to Guizhou, mainly due to the Yangtze River shipping and the Tushui River Valley. (Guizhou is roughly equivalent to Jingxian County)

To be precise, it was from Yibin, an important town in the Yangtze River Ferry in southern Sichuan, and went south through Zhaotong, Qujing to Kunming, which was not too dangerous. After arriving in Kunming, there was also a relatively flat water and land passage leading to Baoshan, which was Buwei County, the capital of Yongchang County in the late Han Dynasty.

Of course, in the northwestern Yunnan areas such as Lijiang and Dali, as well as a bunch of snow-capped scenic spots, and Panzhihua in southern Sichuan, don’t consider it before there are no railways or planes. Those places belong to Yueli County in the late Han Dynasty.

Nowadays, the household registration books of the four counties in Nanzhong show that the population distribution of the four counties is Guanyin County, and Jianning County (near Kunming) each has only 30,000 households.

Jianning County is known to have 100,000 households, but it is mainly concentrated in the northern edge of the plain near Jianwei County.

The most populous county is the most remote Yongchang County, which was known as 230,000 households during the reign of Emperor Ling! It is nominally second only to Shu County and Ba County in Yizhou. But in fact, it is because of the different statistical calibers that other count only the Han population, and Yongchang County also counts the barbarian population reported by the barbarians.

More than 90 years after Yongchang County was established, the Han people have not actually formed a complete rule over it, and often have no prefect. It is just that the court recognizes the local barbarian chiefs and elects the leader to rule. The Han people only send a few people with the status of chiefs to actually serve as liaison officers.

Because Yongchang County was the predecessor of the Eastern Han Dynasty and Ming Dynasty, and during the reign of Emperor Zhang, the Ailao Kingdom was later attached to the country and presented the household registration of the picture book. At that time, he claimed that there were 77 tribes and 500,000 or 600,000 people. In the middle, Ailao Kingdom also rebelled against the Han Dynasty. The Han Dynasty ordered the Kunming people in Jianning County to attack Ailao Kingdom and eliminated it again. Later, after more than 90 years of reproduction, it reached a total of 1.8 million Han barbarians.

(Note: "Kunming people" were a title for a nation during the Eastern Han Dynasty, not for place names.)

...

Liu Bei compared the map and took a long time to understand Li Su's priorities and finally confirmed:

"In this way, the core of this plan is to allow the court's confidants to directly and completely control the people of Jianning County and Kunming, and then use Jianning County to control Yongchang County with trade, education as the main focus and force as the auxiliary.

As for Yueli County, the county of Guanzhan was mainly allowed to let its wealthy chiefs pass on their own. However, Yongchang is still too far from Shu. Even if we build it well, it will not be of great help to pacify the world. If there are materials there, it will be difficult to transport it out."

Li Su advised: "Now we have never asked the counties in the south to pay for food, cloth and other bulk materials that are difficult to transport. Since the two emperors, the court's requirements for Ailao State and Yongchang County have been tributed to jade agate, fragrant wood, beads and jade.

If the development is successful in the future, the barbarians can be taught to farm and provide more food and fodder to support the local people. The court can only allocate tea, pepper, pepper and other spices, or increase specialties for tribute, and they do not need to transport grain as taxes. These specialties, like Jiaozhou fragrant medicine and pearls, can trade with other prefectures and counties to obtain money and grain subsidies for national use, and they can eat enough for soldiers and enough for food."

The best way Li Su thought of to overcome the high transportation costs was to replace the tribute and tax payments to the court with high-value and density treasures.

For example, according to the tax system of the Han ruling region, one thousand stones of grain should be paid, which is converted into a few dou of jade agate pearl agarwood, or dozens of stones of tea and pepper, and the transportation cost will be reduced all of a sudden. On the Shushen Poison Road and the ancient Tea-Horse Road, aren’t these valuable goods that merchants have experienced hardships?

As for transportation, locals can also pay tribute to the Dian horses suitable for mountain transportation. Although Dian horses are not suitable for war horses, their load-carrying power is very good and very useful as cart loads.

After Li Su's analysis in depth, Liu Bei suddenly felt that Nanzhong was not a place without conquest value.

After all, there is still trade between states, and if you have money, you can exchange it for food cloth. In history, the finances of Shu Kingdom were all maintained by exporting Shu brocade. Now, part of it is discounted with jade agate pearls to reduce the pressure on Shu brocade trade.

Liu Bei sighed: "It turns out that there are quite a lot of valuable products in Nanzhong... My good brother, why not ask you to serve as the governor of Nanzhong for one or two years, and Pang Xi, the prefect of Zhudi, is also under your control. Jianwei, Zhudi and others are in charge of the people's strength. You can also organize the collection of corvee labor during the slack farming period in winter, as long as you don't use the people too much.

All the generals we brought were all northerners, and they were not familiar with how to surrender to the barbarians. Do you say that the Southern Xiongnu surrendered to the powerful achievements of Fuluo? It would be easy to deal with these Southern Barbarian Barbarian Kings?"

Li Su: "This...but I am still the prefect of Shu County."

Liu Bei: "The daily civil affairs of Shu County do not require you to govern the place like you. Just find a capable chief minister to allocate your daily work. Besides, it is just that when you are slack in winter, Chengdu is fine, so you will also be in charge of Nanzhong Recruitment and Punishment Affairs.

When the spring plowing is over, you will be released. You can get a general guide and send you a deputy governor to take charge of your time in Chengdu. When you are in Chengdu, you will give him the affairs of the Southern Central Committee to continue to be carried out. Well... Also, the Southern Central Committee Governor sounds bad, so just call him surrender to the Governor, to attract people from afar.”

Liu Bei did not give Li Su a chance to shirk it, so he asked him to quickly get two deputy officers as deputy officers of Shu County and Nanzhong affairs, which facilitates Li Su to remotely control it.

Alas, just got the 1,500 fiefs granted by Liu Bei, and Li Su was short of his manpower, so he had to temporarily have a job.
Chapter completed!