"Traveling around and bartering for goods is still too much trouble."
On the third day when he came to Qinying to do paperwork, Chen Ping took the team leader of the "cooking team" to buy vegetables and meat. When he came back, he expressed his opinions to Heifu. As long as they spoke slower, the two of them could
Able to communicate briefly.
"Cloth can only be used for bulk trade. Otherwise, it will cause inconvenience to both buyers and sellers. Moreover, there is not much cloth in the camp, so bartering with money is the long-term solution."
Heifu nodded. Most of the cloth in their hands was seized from the Yellow River. These trophies did not need to be returned to the public, so Yang Xiong gave some to each village chief. Heifu did not want to keep it for himself, so he gave it to Xia Qingqing.
After Shang's soldiers made clothes, there are not many left.
On the contrary, Chen Liu, who was rewarded with half a tael after the two battles in Waihuang, still had several thousand left.
So he said to Chen Ping: "I already have an idea, but I just want a local to check for and fill in the gaps for me."
As he spoke, Hei Fu let Chen Ping, Zhong Ming, Li Xian and others enter, and put a Qin half-liang coin, a Wei "Yijin cloth coin", and a Wei "huan huán coin" into the
On the table.
"Chen Ping, please tell me what shape these coins are in."
As a local, Chen Ping certainly knew that, and after he agreed, he started talking.
It turns out that the Wei coin system was formulated by Li Kui during the reign of Marquis Wen of Wei and completed by Bai Gui, a great businessman during the reign of King Hui of Wei. It was more complex in terms of types and shapes than that of Qin.
The most common one is Yibu money, which is a kind of cloth money with flat shoulders and empty head. It has three-level currency system: "two Yi, one Yi, half Yi". One Yi of Wei State is about 30 grams in later generations. About one hundred
Yi can be converted into a larger weighing unit "寽". For example, the Yi cloth coin on the case was cast in Daliang. On the front it is written in Wei characters "Liang Zheng 100 yuan", which means this is the value.
One hundred pieces of money for one Yi is equivalent to one piece of copper.
The most obvious sign of Wei's coins is that the characters on the front are written upright, and there is a character "Liang" on the back, which is written upside down. This is probably to prevent counterfeiting.
But in Heifu's view, although the intention of this anti-counterfeiting measure is good, it is actually of no use. Because unlike Qin State, which strictly prohibits private coinage of currency, Wei State's private coinage of currency is rampant, so the money on the market is not all good or bad.
, some empty-headed cloths are clearly half-yi, but in fact they are as thin as paper, and their real weight cannot even reach half-yi...
Chen Ping said helplessly: "Some bad money is not made privately by the local government. Although the Wei Kingdom is rich, the prince of Wei is extravagant. Every year, he spends a large sum of money to celebrate the birthday of the King of Qin. The internal treasury is exhausted several times. Therefore,
Daliang also often casts bad money for profit."
These inside stories were all told by Chen Ping. Except for Heifu, Li Xian felt a little incredible, because in the Qin State, those who minted bad coins privately were sentenced to be city officials, and the government was even less likely to take the lead in minting bad coins, because
That would be a big hit to your credit.
It can be seen that Wei's economy was already on the verge of collapse.
Chen Ping also said that in addition to the empty head cloth, the Wei State also had a kind of coin, which is another coin on the case: the round coin. It looks like a half tael, but the space is a round perforation, which is quite like a round round.
"The round coin is specially used for trade with the Qin State. The weight indicated is roughly half a tael, or one tael, but it is not the case..."
As soon as Chen Ping said this, everyone realized that it was not only the round coins that were mostly bad coins, but also the round coins. The round coins minted in the early years were not bad. In recent years, the round coins on the market have become larger and larger. This is also true.
This means that the weight is getting lighter and lighter.
"In other words, originally one and a half taels of money could be exchanged for one Qin half tael. In fact, two yuans of yuan are only as heavy as one and a half taels."
After Chen Ping explained this, the next work will be easier to handle. Heifu has long planned to come up with an exchange ratio between Qin money and Wei money, so that Qin money can also be used to buy things in the township market, reducing the local garrison and traders.
Trouble.
It's just that when the Qin people took out half a tael, the local merchants insisted on exchanging it according to the unit on the coin, half a tael for a round of money, or four and a half taels for a flat-shouldered Yi cloth weighing one Yi.
In this way, the merchants made a profit, but didn’t the Qin soldiers lose money?
"How about exchanging half a tael for two yuan of money, and half a tael for a piece of cloth?" Heifu said, this exchange ratio will be of great benefit to the Qin army, and it will allow them to save a lot of money during their garrison.
But Chen Ping quickly dissuaded him: "This must not be the case."
"Wei money has different weights. If all money, regardless of lightness, is exchanged according to this method, local merchants will be greatly affected. I am afraid that by then, the market will be full of complaints, which will be detrimental to travel."
Although he was helping the Qin army, he was still a native of his hometown. If something harmed the interests of his native people, Chen Ping would of course fight for it.
"Then what do you think we should do?" Li Xian was a little dissatisfied with Chen Ping's "eating everything out".
"The villain has an idea." Chen Ping thought for a moment and said to Hei Fu: "It can save the Qin army and the hometown from harm. During the period of garrison, we can trade fairly and leave benefits to those who come after..."
…
Early the next morning, at the gate of the bustling Hufuxiang City, a wooden board was nailed to the city gate. The literate people squeezed over to take a look, and saw that there was a beautiful hand-written Wei character on it. The general meaning was, "Jingxiangzhong"
The three officials discussed that from now on Qin's half-tael coins will be circulated in the market in parallel with Wei's coins, and will be used as the standard official currency, and merchants will not refuse!
Common items on the market, such as vegetables, meat, grain, cloth, etc., are given a standard price of half a tael, and the fluctuation should not exceed one-tenth!
Rural and city vendors don't have many complaints. Although they can't make more money by doing this, it doesn't harm them.
This was decided by Heifu after he visited Zhang's house yesterday and discussed it with the Zhang brothers according to Chen Ping's idea.
Zhang Bo was initially reluctant to agree, but was frightened by Hei Fu's words.
"This matter is Chen Liu, Waihuang has already implemented it, and it will be sooner or later in Humo Township. Seeing that the two monarchs have worked with me for a long time, I will secretly inform you two. In a few years, not only Qin money will be popular in Wei
I'm afraid even local Wei money will be banned!"
"I advise you, the two gentlemen, to exchange all the Wei money at home for Qin money as soon as possible after Daliang City is destroyed and the Wei territory is settled. Otherwise, it will be too late to regret!"
…
After offering advice to help Heifu solve the trading problem, Chen Ping also began to do his own job: writing some announcements for the Qin army that needed to be translated into Wei characters. The announcement in the township yesterday was written by him himself.
But first, Chen Ping had to master the Chinese character Qin. Fortunately, he was smart and learned quickly.
Speaking of which, after King Ping moved eastward, the world began to be divided for more than five hundred years. The wars that lasted for hundreds of years not only brought about the fragmentation of the feudal princes, but also the culture began to "do their own things."
The coins that caused a lot of trouble for the Qin people in the local life a few days ago are one example. In addition, the strange characters are also a major obstacle to the lagging exchanges between countries.
The cultures of various countries develop relatively independently, with strong local colors, and the characters have strong local colors, which will inevitably lead to the prominent phenomenon of heterogeneous characters between regions, thus forming variant characters.
With the decline of the public clan and the rise of the scholars, the simplicity of writing and the wide application of characters also led to the simplification and sloppy writing of characters, thus forming the province-bian characters. Knowledge was passed down from generation to generation, but they were all copied with pens and slips, so it was inevitable to write
Wrong characters are used to spread errors, resulting in errors.
This is the reason for the differences in the writing of the seven countries.
Chen Ping did not have as good a family background as Zhang Cang, so he did not start learning Wei characters until he was ten years old. During his study tour in neighboring counties, he came into contact with several scholars from Han and Zhao, and saw the characters Zhao and Han.
In fact, the characters of these three countries are not much different, because Zhao, Wei and Han did not separate until two hundred years ago, and they all belonged to the Jin Kingdom before.
But in addition to the characters of the Three Jin Dynasties, there are four writing systems of Qin, Qi, Yan, and Chu. These four countries are far away from the Central Plains and located in the corners. They are relatively independent geographically and have very different cultures, although their origins are from the Zhou Dynasty.
Bronze inscriptions and seal scripts, but according to different regional cultures, have shown signs of drifting away.
People in the Central Plains can still recognize the characters Qi and Yan, but they can only stare wide-eyed at the flying and phoenix-like bodies of birds and insects on Chu silk books, and are helpless.
However, in Chen Ping's eyes, the Qin characters are very special. Perhaps it is because the Qin State inherited Zong Zhou's hometown and absorbed a large amount of Zhou people's culture. Perhaps it is because the Qin people are conservative and old-fashioned. For hundreds of years, they have adhered to the orthodox characters of the Zhou Dynasty.
The glyphs of "" are gradually becoming more regular and symmetrical in writing style, transitioning to Xiaozhuan.
Therefore, it is not difficult to understand the character Qin.
Sometimes Heifu would come to inspect his work and ask Chen Ping how he was doing. When Chen Ping said that it only took him two or three days to learn the Qin characters that were different from the Wei characters, he couldn't help but
Looked surprised.
"Why is it so fast?"
Chen Ping cupped his hands and said: "You shouldn't be surprised. The difference between the Qin characters and the Wei characters is actually not that big. Among the hundred characters, about half of the strokes are basically the same, but the writing shape is different, and another quarter
The strokes are different, but the shapes are similar, and you can tell by looking at them carefully. Only a quarter of the characters that look completely different are very different variant characters that need to be learned again."
"I see."
Hei Fu nodded, but heard Chen Ping sigh with emotion: "The princes are not as unified as in the past, and they are harming themselves by evil rituals and music, and all their books have been removed... The clothes and hats are different, the speech is different, and the writing is different. After these days.
, We know that coins, speech, writing, weights and measures can create such a large rift and obstacle to the exchanges and trade between the two countries."
"Don't worry."
But Hei Fu burst out laughing and predicted to Chen Ping: "Just like the territories and people of the seven countries in the world will be unified under Qin. Whether it is coins, weights and measures, writing, all the above will be unified in the future.
For one.”
The unification of these things was not something that the Qin Dynasty Central Committee just thought of. It was not only in Hufu Township where they were located, but also in Yangwu County, Chenliu, Waihuang, and in the occupied areas of the Qin Army.
Carry out similar work. Because people all want to get whatever is convenient for them. When political barriers no longer exist, these different things will lose their meaning of existence.
Heifu guessed that in Xianyang City, while King Qin was preparing to unify Liuhe, he was probably also preparing carriages on the same track and writing books on the same text with Li Si and others...
He continued to say to Chen Ping, who was in a daze: "Countries are no longer divided into borders, and there are no obstacles to exchanges between scholars from all over the world!"
“Traveling on the same track, writing on the same page, traveling on the same subject!”
"This is not the fantasy and expectation of the sages, but the future that is just around the corner!"
