In the early morning, the sun rose, and it was a brand new day. Huaiyu slept until the sun was just above three poles, and Runniang served and dressed her. She looked at his broad chest, strong body, and all the muscles all over his body, and her eyes were wired.
Huaiyu stopped her thoughts.
"Today is a holiday,"
Runniang was a little disappointed, so she shyly picked up her small fist and punched him on the chest a few times. Huaiyu suspected that she was taking advantage of him.
The tenth day of September.
The Turks have withdrawn from Xiaoguan and returned to Saibei via Yanxia.
It's rare that everyone is free today, and the whole family can finally sit down and enjoy the warmth of family. In the front hall of the main courtyard where Lao Wu lives, there are pears, grapes, dates and other fruits on the table.
"It's finally peaceful," Lao Wu said.
We have lived in this house in Yongxingfang for a while, and everyone is very satisfied with it because the place is larger, several times the size of the original house in Huaiyuanfang. Although most of the land has been built with garden ponds, there are still several
Yuan, Laowu, Huaiyi, and Huaiyu each have their own courtyards, which are not crowded at all.
"If you have some time, you have to go back to Longqiao and bring some food to help the villagers."
In recent days, there are always villagers from Longqiao coming to Chang'an to join the Wu family. After experiencing the catastrophe, many villagers are now very difficult. Their crops were almost destroyed, their homes were robbed, and some men in the family were even killed.
The woman was kidnapped.
Now winter has come, but there is no food.
The court released food for relief, but it was a drop in the bucket, so everyone could only help themselves, go to relatives and friends, or simply go begging. Many people in Guanzhong had already dragged their families out of Guanzhong and went to Henan or Shannan to beg for food.
.
The local government does not want the people under its rule to become refugees, but without enough food, it cannot lock people up and starve to death, and it can only turn a blind eye.
Both the Wu family and Qianjintang still have some surplus food.
At this time, although the price of food in Chang'an was not as high as when the Turks were there, the price of food has dropped, but the supply is still insufficient. The food stores in the two cities only sell food around noon every day, and the queues are very long every day.
Only the first few people can buy it.
Food on the underground black market in Nancheng is still surprisingly expensive.
It has become common for major wealthy families and even those temples to take advantage of the opportunity to borrow grain and lend money. It is common to borrow one in autumn and pay back three in spring. It is even difficult to borrow such grain, and it must be secured by mortgage.
Your own house is used as a mortgage, and once it is repaid, you will have to take over the house and land.
I knew it was a trap, but I had to jump in in order to survive.
The villagers of Longqiaobao came one after another. Ever since the first orphan and widower came to the door, they asked Lao Wu to borrow money to bury their dead family members and to borrow food to feed their families. Lao Wu and his wife borrowed the money without saying anything.
More people came one after another.
To them, Lao Wu, who had always been stingy, actually refused to come to them.
In Lao Wu's words, we are all neighbors in the same village and fellow villagers. At this time, we can help each other if we can.
There were also two families that suffered a catastrophe this time. The mainstay of the family was gone. Even the woman in charge was kidnapped, leaving orphans and elderly people. The sky fell. They had neither money to bury them nor food to survive. They found Lao Wu, who was gray and gray.
The old man and the child with hairy hair were so hungry that they were weak.
When they met, he knelt down and directly offered to sell the land to the Wu family in exchange for money to bury his son. He even hoped that the Wu family could accept the three young children of the family as servants or assistants.
There is really no way to survive, and I want to go to Guandong to beg, but the orphans, the old and the weak are afraid of dying on the way. The old man is extremely sad. A toothless old woman can't walk steadily, how can she pull three children under ten years old.
The only valuable things in the family are the three-hole cave dwelling and twenty acres of land.
This family is not the Forbidden Army, but the former Guanzhong refugees who were resettled in Longqiao after the War of the First World War. They were allotted 20 acres of land in the early days of the Republic of China, and then rented dozens of acres of land from the old Wu family and two other Forbidden Army families. The former husband of the old man
He is still here, and with his young and strong son and daughter-in-law, the family is living a pretty good life.
His son was killed by the Turks. He was a village hero and he didn’t even get any compensation. Although the body was found later, he didn’t even have money to buy a coffin, so he had to dig a shallow pit and bury it with a sweeper. The old man’s daughter-in-law was buried.
He was kidnapped and never came back.
The old man's husband was so angry that he was not in very good health. He was cold, hungry, angry and anxious, so he suffered a stroke. He didn't even have a place to live in Miyuan City during the war, and how could he have the money to seek medical advice?
, he could only hold on for a few days, and then he died.
Similarly, you can only bury a broken mat in a mass grave first, and then buy a new coffin for burial later when you have the opportunity.
You should accumulate virtue and do good, buy this land, and take in these three children.
The old man knelt down and kowtowed to Lao Wu and his wife.
The warrior Ke helped the old man up, but in the end he had no choice but to agree. Although Huaiyu thought he could temporarily lend them money and food to tide over the difficulties, the old man refused.
Because they have no ability to repay it now, and borrowing debt will only bring compound interest. Now they sell the land and let the Wu family take in the three children and keep them at home to take care of them. At least they can have a free body when they grow up in the future.
, and there is still a chance for a turnaround.
This is all decades of life experience.
Lao Wu finally bought these 20 acres of land, along with the old man's family's shabby cave dwelling and the remaining shabby household items. The land is not very valuable now. Under the equal land system of the imperial court, land sales are restricted and there are policies for buying land.
risk.
But Lao Wu is obviously a little obsessed with the land.
In fact, if we only look at this transaction as a transaction, Lao Wu lost money. The land price was higher than the market price, and even the shabby cave dwellings and furniture were taken care of and given more money. As for the four young and old, they still had to stay.
It doesn't do much work, it's just four burdens.
A half-grown boy, a poor man.
Huaiyu watched with mixed emotions, but he could also understand what they were doing. The debts in this era were really catastrophic. Even the annual interest on government money from imperial yamen was almost 100%, and private interest would only increase.
The higher the period of famine and war, the higher the interest rate on this debt will be.
The hemp rope will break at the thinnest part, and bad luck will only seek out the miserable.
Debt is the best tool for the powerful and even the temples in this era to harvest the people. Once they borrow money, the interest will be compounded. It is easy to get out of it, and you will have to shed your skin if you don't die. As for these neighbors, their current situation is not the same as that of ordinary people.
Those who won't lend them debts, but are willing to lend them, must be those who keep an eye on their land and keep an eye on them. In a few years, their family and their land will completely become someone else's.
It would be better to take the initiative and sell the land, as a favor, and for the sake of the fellow villagers, beg for a way for the children to live.
In the end, Lao Wu paid for 20 acres of land, took over three dilapidated cave dwellings, and took in four young and old people. They were considered employees of the Wu family, but they received no wages and only provided food, clothing and accommodation.
The old man helped cook in the kitchen, and a girl followed him. The two boys, the older one was nine years old, were arranged to be apprentices in Qianjin Hall, and the younger one, only seven years old, was made the third boy Huai Liang's book boy.
As soon as this family settled down, another family in a similar situation also came to the house. In the end, they bought the land and took over the house, including the orphans and the widowed mother.
The other villagers had no choice but to grit their teeth and carry it on one more time, so they approached the Wu family, hoping to borrow some food to tide them over temporarily.
Lao Wu also generously agreed to this, borrowing autumn and returning spring, borrowing one and repaying two.
The interest rate is the most generous at the moment, and the grain borrowed by Daxingshan Temple and other major temples in Chang'an is even higher than this.
When the villagers signed the IOUs, many of them knew in their hearts that they would not be able to pay them back until spring, and they would have to postpone them until the summer harvest. If the delay was extended, interest rates would be increased, or even interest would be compounded. They would have to pay them back then.
More food.
If the family has a lot of land, if the harvest is good, then they can bite the bullet and pay back more grain. If the harvest fails, they may have to pay off the old debt first and then take out new debt. Then the interest will take away most of their harvest.
.
It is even foreseeable that some families will not be able to repay the debt when it is due, and they may have to sell off their land. But no one is willing to sell off the little land they have, so they can only delay it for a while.
Many farmers went bankrupt, even pawned their wives and sold their children, often because of this hesitation and failure to deal with debts in time, and were eventually overwhelmed by interest rates.
lobby.
Lao Wu took out a box, which contained a stack of IOUs, as well as land deeds, house deeds, and even private deeds for selling people into slavery.
Looking at these, Lao Wu couldn't help but sigh, how many families were ruined.
"This time, we have collected 230 acres of land in Longqiao Fort and the neighboring villages." Lao Wu handed the land deed to Liu, "Old lady, please keep it."
The rest are all IOUs. This time a lot of grain and money and silk were lent.
In fact, there are many IOUs at Huaiyu, even more than this, all borrowed by Qianjintang employees, and some employees even brought relatives to borrow them.
When Huaiyu borrows food from his employees, he borrows it in autumn and pays it back in spring. For half a year, he borrows one and pays back two. But when he lends it to outsiders, he borrows one and pays back three.
Nowadays, food is precious and there is no shortage of food. Even Huaiyu, who is not a relative of the employees, will not borrow it, and the borrowing is limited.
Qianjintang's business is now booming and its profits are huge. The branch in Xishi is also under intensive construction, and there are even plans to open a branch in Luoyang.
The industry in Yanjingzhai, Zhang County also has great potential.
Huaiyu looked at these IOUs and gained a deeper understanding of the financial debts of the Tang Dynasty. After all, his first job was to capture the money-making history of Sanyuan County. He also received a large sum of money from the military weapons supervisor and Shenji camp.
Money.
These days, the financial industry is completely dependent on the names of the imperial government, powerful officials, and temples. The interest rates are astonishingly high, and the debt burden of the people is also amazing.
It can be said that lending is the most profitable business these days, but the entry threshold is high, and it is impossible to do it without good connections.
Huaiyu thought that he might as well open a pawn shop of his own.
These days, pawnshops are generally called pledge shops, or longevity warehouses, which originally originated from Buddhist temples in the Northern and Southern Dynasties.
In the Tang Dynasty, government offices had public money, and the money-grabbing orders were used to lend money. Temples had longevity treasury for mortgage lending. Even gold and silver shops, grain shops, etc. also engaged in financial lending business. Gold and silver shops generally also operated various businesses to store and store valuable money for customers.
The service is equivalent to a bank safe. There is no interest for depositing money and you have to pay a storage fee.
Those big temples and big business houses can even provide important customers with some long-distance remittance services such as Chang'an deposit and Luoyang pickup.
Huaiyu felt that everyone was coming to the Wu family for loans, so it would be better to open a warehouse and run it directly. Anyway, he did have some spare money on hand now. He couldn't just leave it in the cellar to grow mold, or deposit it in someone else's house and pay the storage fee to someone else.
?
If he lends it to himself, he can make money by making money. The key is that this mortgage shop is very profitable. He is also the son of Jianguo County now, so he doesn't have to worry about being slaughtered and annexed by others.
When I mentioned this idea to Lao Wu and Huai Yi, Lao Wu was a little hesitant. He always felt that this kind of business was not easy to do. He still thought it was safe to buy land, slaves, cattle and horses if he had money. Huai Yi had never studied these things.
Yes.
"You should think about it again, and if you think about it, just do it." Lao Wu finally expressed his support.
"In a moment, Prince Bin will come to propose marriage to the matchmaker, so get ready."