After exercising in the early morning, Bai Tu was having dinner with Lu Bu, Lu Lingqi, and Tai Shici.
At first, Taishi Ci refused. His duty was to protect Bai Tu. As for Lu Lingqi... although she was technically a guard under his command, Taishi Ci felt that at this point, there was no need for him, as a superior, to interfere.
Not to mention Lu Bu, the relationship is here. After coming to "train" Bai Tu every day, isn't it normal to have dinner together?
However, Bai Tu was really awkward. There was someone standing next to him while eating, so usually when Tai Shi Ci caught up, Bai Tu would pull him to eat with him...
Unless it was a formal banquet, Bai Tu would not tolerate this corrupt behavior of having others serve him.
Many people can't understand Bai Tu's "awkwardness" - is this awkward? A real aristocratic family, not to mention serving when eating, even has a servant to fart in the master's house.
When the time comes, take the initiative to take the blame!
"The fish Xingba brought back tastes good," Lu Lingqi said.
"When the matter with Yuan Shu is over, we can go back and try something new." Bai Tu said helplessly.
This breakfast is quite luxurious!
It's millet porridge, pickled vegetables, and fifty pounds of wild large yellow croaker... pickled salted fish.
If it were a modern wild large yellow croaker weighing more than 20 pounds, it would probably be sold for millions, right?
But there is no way, from Wuxian to Hefei, even if you "ride the red dust and laugh at the white man", it is unlikely to eat fresh "goldfish". After all, the road conditions here are so bad that you can only pickle the fish.
"Actually, I prefer last night's bacon," Lu Lingqi said.
"Jiangdong and Huainan are not as cold as Bingzhou. Don't eat so many fatty foods, otherwise unnecessary fat will slow down your speed and reaction." Lu Bu reminded.
Lu Lingqi rolled her eyes. Compared to Bai Tu... Lu Bu had higher requirements for Lu Lingqi.
Well, after all, Lu Lingqi is now Bai Tu's "guard". If there is an enemy, she will be the first to attack...
"Ahem, bacon and ham must be promoted in the future," Bai Tu said.
As a large pig farmer, Bai Tu naturally knows that the supply of pork is increasing significantly.
Whether it is bacon or ham, not to mention the taste, the amount of salt consumed will be a satisfactory number!
In fact, the price of ancient salt has nothing to do with the cost, especially after the emergence of the sun salt method... its essence is a "tax".
Whether it is a rural farmer or a boudoir lady, everyone has to eat salt, which is a disguised head tax.
At the same time, foods containing a lot of salt such as salted fish and cured meat are actually given extra taxes invisibly!
Therefore, unlike the cooking method of yellow croaker, Baitu decided to spare no effort to promote the preparation methods of bacon, cured meat, ham... this kind of food.
When salt production is mainly controlled by Bai Tu, the heavier the taste of the people in the world, the better!
These are all taxes...
Bai Tu even wanted to publicize: You are not eating bacon, you are helping the Han people!
According to the World Health Organization, the optimal daily salt intake for humans is 5g.
In the eyes of modern people, especially those in heavy-flavored areas, it is a very "light" amount.
And in Bai Tu's view, at least in farming civilization, pursuing the optimal value is completely nonsense - manual workers who farm in the open air under the sun will definitely not have the same demand for "salt" as modern white-collar workers.
At least in the history of Chinese civilization, until modern society, "salt" has always been in short supply.
Bai Tu had seen in a paper that after various fancy calculations about the salt intake of people in the Han Dynasty, the data obtained was that in the Spring and Autumn Period... the per capita salt consumption in Qi, a large salt-producing country, was close to 5g. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties,
It exceeds the standard by three to four times.
However, Baitu can now responsibly say that there is a big problem with the calculation method of that paper...
The first and most important point is that the data used as the theoretical basis comes from "salt consumption".
You must know that in ancient times when there were no refrigerators, a large part of the salt was used to store, that is, pickle ingredients!
Pickling involves a lot of losses, and there is a big deviation between salt consumption and intake...
At this time, the consumption of "salt" by the people in Jiangdong was roughly the same. Judging from the sales channels of 17 salt merchants, about 300,000 shi of sea salt cooked every year were consumed in Jiangdong.
Generally speaking, it is similar to the Qi State in the Spring and Autumn Period. After all, there was no qualitative leap in salt production technology from the Spring and Autumn Period to the Han Dynasty.
Moreover, Qi State was also a major salt producer in the Spring and Autumn Period.
Of course, considering that people must cook salt privately, the per capita salt consumption in Jiangdong is actually higher than that in Qi, but it will not be too large.
In other words, even in Jiangdong, a salt-producing land, the salt intake of ordinary people is slightly lower than the "light" health standards of modern people!
Lu Bu just reminded Lu Lingqi not to eat too fat, but did not say not to eat too salty, which also proves this point.
From this point of view, the common people at this time still have great potential to help the Han Dynasty...
Of course, another prerequisite is that they must become rich first, otherwise they won’t mind eating lighter!
After breakfast, Bai Tu received an "email" from Lu Su from Jinling at Ji's place in Hefei, which contained the price of salt from various places.
In fact, Bai Tu and Lu Su have discussed this issue for a long time before, and now it is just the final confirmation. After all, the Minbu Yanyin will be officially launched soon.
Each "yin" can be exchanged for 500 stones of salt at the salt farm, but salt yin is not sold at the salt farm.
Although many articles describe ancient salt as comparable to gold, often hundreds of times the price of rice, in fact, in most "normal" times, the price of salt is far from that high.
Moreover, the price of salt is actually much more stable than the price of grain. The price of grain can easily vary dozens of times in years of disaster or good years. However, there are only two possibilities for the price of salt to be falsely high - either the court is short of money, or the salt merchants are out of control.
Already...
The price of salt in the Han Dynasty was generally around one thousand qian per stone, which was four times the price of grain in normal times.
However, in today's troubled times, Jiangdong's grain prices have still tripled under the pressure of relief grains - which is very conscientious.
The price of salt at this time was about two and a half times the price of rice.
Although the Han Dynasty is short of money now, and the wealthy families who cook salt also want to lose control and feel refreshed, but... the latter has no basis to monopolize the salt industry now, and the former cannot collect a penny and can only wait.
For ambitious people like Bai Tu to "help the Han Dynasty", the price of salt will naturally only rise slightly and cannot take off.
According to the history of "Another World", the price of salt was basically stable during the prosperous Tang Dynasty. However, due to too much grain, the price difference was dozens of times higher. After the Anshi Rebellion, the Tang Dynasty was really short of money, so it increased its efforts to purchase salt and iron.
, causing the price of salt to skyrocket. During the Song Dynasty, in most periods, the price of salt would not exceed ten times the price of grain, but it would probably rise every time there was a chaos.
Now the Ministry of Civil Affairs has set the basic price of salt at 500 shi of grain, which is almost 1:1 for salt and grain...
The basic price of salt can be purchased in Wu County. You can use grain, money, or silk.
However, at this price, retailing it is at most twice the cost, and there are also transportation and other issues to consider, so the profit is not high.
The more earned salt is distributed in Hefei, Guangling and other places. It only costs 200 shi of grain, and the payment must be made with grain - that is, everyone is encouraged to transport grain to Huainan.
Animals have their own paths, and rats have their own paths. If we really transport grain from the east of the Yangtze River, half of the consumption is the minimum. Especially now that the drought in Huainan has caused a surge in transportation consumption. In this case... it is better to give full play to the subjective initiative of each family.
, to see if there is any potential to be tapped.
And without Bai Tu's guidance, they consciously began to acquire the owned land in Huainan - as for the unowned land? Sorry, the unowned land is used to "support the Han Dynasty", and is now managed by the General's Office.
Even the General Mansion is personally buying up land in Huainan, but what Bai Tu likes is open land suitable for military settlements and collective farming, and he doesn't even bother to look at every corner.
In addition, in Chaisang and other places adjacent to Jingzhou, if it can be proved that the grain was transported from Jingzhou, there is also a half-price discount of 250 shi...
The effect is very significant. Sure enough, these nobles still have potential to be tapped. Previously, because the price of food in Jiangdong did not rise due to the suppression of relief grains, there was no siphon to the surrounding areas.
And as soon as the salt was drawn out, boatloads of grain flowed from Jiangxia to Jiangdong...
When Bai Tu wanted to make official transactions before, Liu Biao refused directly. However, now they are all "civilian actions" that have been broken down into parts. He is unable to intervene if he wants to. After all, his control over the wealthy families under his jurisdiction is far less than Bai Tu's.
picture.
Because you can go down the Yangtze River, the cost of transporting grain to Jingzhou is low, and Jingzhou is not greatly affected by drought. Moreover, many wealthy families have their own business in private, and the price of grain in Jingzhou has also been raised.
Three points.
There are rumors that Liu Biao cursed his mother after hearing the news.
The salt in Baitu is not only subject to a salt tax, but is also instigating a series of changes!
There were even some ruthless people, such as... The Zhang family in Guangling cooperated with the Zheng family in Wu County. The Zhang family took out 50% of the originally abundant grain reserves and sent them to Guangling City. After that, a large branch went directly to Guangling City.
After receiving relief grain, he moved to Jiangdong.
Of course, there are some in-depth transactions between the two parties. For example, before the Zhang family moved away, they first traded land to the family who stayed in Guangling, so they could take out so much grain, and traded their land from the Zheng family.
The land of Shanyin in Kuaiji.
And Zheng's has also become the largest salt agent in a short period of time...
Chen Gong naturally welcomed this kind of saucy operation. Zhang Hong, the representative of the branch that moved the Zhang family to Jiangdong, was also appointed as Guangling's chief secretary, his assistant in Guangling, and promised to take him back with him in the future.
Jinling, recommending him to join the central branch - the reason why he moved to Jiangdong Branch was not only for money, but also to place a bet on Bai Tu.
Bai Tu had also seen even more outrageous operations. When he was in Hefei and saw someone transporting grain from Shouchun direction in exchange for salt, he couldn't help but worry about Yuan Shu, and silently gave the visitor another 50% off.