Chapter 142: Play cotton and make quilts (thanks to a fat man in Mongolia
Not long after, another caravan passed by Congling. The nearby post station had already received instructions from Li Siye and sent people to lead them to Shouchu City. Then Li Siye came forward to negotiate the price of the escort and arrange for the next batch.
Escorts.
He still uses the method of martial arts to determine the outcome. There is not much fairness here, but it is relatively fair. The purpose of using this method is to stimulate the training enthusiasm of the soldiers. Only those with good martial arts are qualified to participate in the escort. In addition,
There is no other way.
The soldiers' training enthusiasm was high and an effective and long-lasting pattern was formed. They trained in the morning and went to the fields to weed in the afternoon. The days were dull and long.
…
In the autumn of the 25th year of Kaiyuan, the temperature in the Congling area has reached minus three degrees. There have been two light snowfalls in the past few days. The sun shines out, and the entire Congling is dotted with a mixture of pale color and white snow.
As soon as the weather cleared up, the soldiers and women guarding the city carried large and small baskets on their backs and went to the fields to pick cotton. The thin snow fell on the leaves, giving people the illusion of a bumper harvest.
For a whole day, we moved from the Duo River to Congling to guard the city, and people kept coming and going to carry the picked cotton.
Regarding the cotton harvesting work, Li Siye made full preparations in advance. He asked Yu Gou to free up two warehouses to store cotton, and also assigned two soldiers to Yu Gou to weigh the cotton with a large scale. Soldiers and ladies
He picked the cotton, weighed it and settled the money on the spot at the price of six cents per catty.
This kind of work is very fulfilling. Even the children who guarded the city ran to the fields to help their parents pick cotton. Looking at the baskets of labor fruits, they exchanged them for copper coins in the hands of the guard.
, strung together with hemp ropes, gradually became heavier, and their hearts were as sweet as honey.
Li Siye came back from Qiuci this time and bought Yu Gou a knife of thick ribbed paper, but he was reluctant to use it and still relied on knotting ropes to record the amount of cotton collected every day. Finally, he summarized the two
The warehouse is full. Congling's total cotton income this year is more than 200,000 jins, and the expenditure on cotton purchase reaches 1.2 million yuan.
In order to pay for this expenditure, he took out all the belongings he had after arriving in Anxi, including the reward of 70,000 yuan for killing the gangster Zhang Kuo on the road, and the gold and jade he looted from Zhang Kuo and his gang.
At the trading market in Kucha Town, more than 400,000 yuan was obtained, as well as the money earned from escorting the caravan. The remaining expenses were spent on part of the gold sent by Mansour, and Suhrab was used as the middleman.
, and exchanged it for copper coins with the Persian rich man in Kucha.
Just harvesting cotton cannot be converted into money. It also needs to be processed into quilts and sold.
He ordered people to cut down trees on the mountain and made dozens of cotton bows out of beef tendons. He also bought hundreds of pieces of hemp cloth from Shule Town before the weather was too cold and the heavy snow blocked the roads.
During the entire winter when the roads were frozen and the roads were frozen, apart from eating meat, drinking alcohol, and sleeping, the only job of the men guarding Congling was to play cotton. After the heavy snowfall, the mountains were covered with snow.
The covered green ridge guarded the city, and in the large and small built rooms, there was the hum of bowstrings one after another. In order to make this work less boring, Li Siye also taught them to sing small songs to spice up their lives.
"Play cotton, play cotton, half a tael of cotton becomes eight or two, old cotton becomes new cotton, when the quilt is finished, the girl is getting married..."
Such a melodious tune is sung by men with rough voices, which has a unique charm.
The ladies were assigned another job, which was to cut fabrics and sew quilts. Each quilt used six pounds of cotton, which was then folded into tofu blocks and tied up with hemp rope.
Li Siye estimated that the cost of each quilt plus labor was 160 yuan. After calculating the cost price, it was easy to set the price.
When the sky cleared up, he took four bundles of quilts as samples and rode a long distance to Kucha with Teng Mu.
After they entered Kucha City, they first found an inn to stay. The long journey made their legs numb due to the cold. The two sat in front of the charcoal basin prepared by the store, took off their Liuhe boots, took off their wet foot bags, and used their hands to
After rubbing his feet, he felt that the blood in his body began to slowly circulate, and Li Siye took a breath of relief.
Sitting opposite him, Fujimu felt very depressed and thought that he was very unlucky. He came to the Western Regions to learn warfare and train for fighting. He thought that by following Li Siye, he could appreciate the fierceness of the soldiers of the Tang Dynasty and master the secrets of military battles. But instead
Unexpectedly, after being held captive in Congling for more than half a year, he only escorted the caravan, planted cotton, and played cotton, and today he had to trek through heavy snow to come to Congling to sell quilts with him.
Damn it! If I want to farm, wouldn’t it be better to go back to Japan to farm? Why should I come to this bitter cold green ridge with you?
Li Siye raised his head, glanced at him, and asked with a smile: "You have some ideological baggage in your heart. If you are dissatisfied with me, you can tell me directly."
"No, no. I have absolutely no intention of being dissatisfied." Fujimaki waved his hands quickly, but his eyelids were still drooped.
"Haha." Li Siye said, "If you don't tell me now, I won't give you a chance to speak in the future."
"No... okay!" Tengmu stood up with bare feet and said excitedly: "When I followed the envoy sent to the Tang Dynasty to study various industries, I initially chose Confucianism. Do you know why I changed to the military school?
?”
"how could I know?"
"The day when the Tang Dynasty mission was sent to Chang'an, it also happened to be the day when Tang Jiahui, the military governor of the four towns in Anxi, returned to Chang'an to report on his duties. We marveled at the vastness of Chang'an City and the gathering of thousands of countries, and marveled at the majesty and magnificence of the Daming Palace.
But what really surprised and impressed us was the Anxi cavalry under the command of Tang Jiedushi."
Fujimaki looked out of the inn window with confusion, replaying the scene of that afternoon in his mind: "There was the sound of horse hooves hitting the ground in the distance, like some kind of rhythmic drumbeat. I looked back and saw on the horizon
A row of glittering golden shadows appeared, a row of warriors wearing golden armor, with horizontal swords on their left waist, crossbows on their right waist, and long blades on their backs, like blue light cutting through the sky, and then again
A row of warriors in golden armor, all holding horse spears, was followed by warriors in silver armor, holding spears and embracing shields. They were like steel giants armed to the teeth... Later, I
Only then did I realize that that kind of armor was the Mingguang Armor, and it required more than sixty processes to make a set. That kind of horse armor required more than a year of meticulous work by craftsmen to create. Even a Mo Dao like that requires a lot of work.
Money and manpower.”
"That's why I want to learn, learn the Tang Army's armor, learn the Tang Army's knife-making skills, and learn the Tang Army's formations."
"Hmph! With all due respect, if you want to sell quilts like you, even if you sell them for a hundred years, you won't be able to match one percent of Tang Jiahui's sales."
Li Siye nodded suddenly: "Oh, I see, so that's what you think. In fact, you don't have to follow me around, and you don't have to follow me to buy quilts. I once gave you a chance, and I wrote it specifically for you and Tian Zhen.
I received a letter of recommendation and asked you to go to Shule Town to be a team leader, but you don’t value it.”
"you!"
Fujimaki was so angry that he pointed two fingers at him: "I didn't expect! You actually went astray!"