Dengzhou, Yangzhou, Hangzhou, Mingzhou, Quanzhou, Guangzhou, this is the largest foreign trade city of Datang today.

Among them, Hangzhou City has developed very rapidly in recent years.

Li Kuan's fleet went directly down the Qiantang River from Hangzhou Bay and entered the city of Hangzhou.

Hangzhou is the capital with the most industries in Chu Wangfu in addition to Guanzhong, Dengzhou and Liangzhou.

As early as when Dongfang Ping came here to serve as the city's Bolangzhong, Li Kuan arranged for people to come here to buy tea gardens.

Today, Hangzhou's municipal tax is second only to Dengzhou, contributing a lot of revenue to the Chu Palace.

Basically, by next year, all the money that the palace spent on the cement road from Chang'an City to Liangzhou will be recovered, and all that will be made after that will be profits.

Wu Meiniang: "It's a corner of the south of the Yangtze River, but I didn't expect that several state capitals are quite prosperous." ”

From Yangzhou to Suzhou, and then to Hangzhou, although compared with Chang'an City, the degree of prosperity is still inferior.

However, in some specific fields, there are already places beyond Chang'an.

"It's just that these state capitals are more prosperous, and then if you go west, it's much worse."

Li Kuan's next stop was Hongzhou, which was the location of Nanchang in later generations.

Don't look at the Ming and Qing dynasties, Jiangxi was already very developed, but in the Tang Dynasty, it was still very backward.

Li Kuan felt the need to give Wu Meiniang a vaccination.

"Lord Wang, when we set off, the caravan greeted Lu Quan, Zhonglu Quan of Hangzhou City, and the shopkeeper who came to the city, will we go directly to the city of Boshi in a while?"

As the governor of the city, Li Kuan must have inspected the important city of Hangzhou.

When Dongfang Ping and Lu Quan came to Hangzhou, there was really a storm, which dealt a severe blow to the arrogance of the local maritime merchants, and only then did the city have a stable life.

I don't know if Lu Quan returned to Hangzhou a few years later, if he came up with anything new.

As for the party, it was Li Kuan who arranged for him to come to Hangzhou to establish a tea workshop.

Although for the sake of secrecy, the tea workshop should be built in Chang'an as much as possible.

However, after the new tea is picked, if it is not fried on the same day, the grade of the tea will drop a lot.

Hangzhou is so far away from Chang'an, it is impossible to transport fresh tea to Chang'an for further frying.

In addition, there are some other tea merchants in Guanzhong who have made fried tea, so Li Kuan made up his mind to let the coming party go to Hangzhou to open a fried tea workshop.

"Go directly to the city, the rice promotion in Suzhou is so smooth, Hangzhou is estimated to have nothing to worry about, we come here this time, it will be a tour of the mountains and rivers."

However, Hangzhou has planted Nanyang rice on a trial basis this year, and many families have seen with their own eyes the situation of early rice and late rice, and the situation of two crops in one year.

Plus that yield......

There was no need for the imperial court to promote it at all, so everyone spontaneously searched for Nanyang rice seeds everywhere.

There were even a few maritime merchants who had returned from Champa and received special requests to transport rice seeds.

……

Lu Quan was very excited, half a month ago, he received an official letter from the Governor's Mansion of the City Bodu, informing him that His Royal Highness the King of Chu would come to Hangzhou to inspect, waiting left and right, and today he finally arrived.

"Lord Wang, in the thirteenth year of Zhenguan, it is estimated that the municipal tax in Hangzhou alone can reach 300,000 yuan, and this growth rate is still accelerating."

finally had a chance to perform, and Lu Quan naturally wanted to show it well.

"These maritime merchants are willing to pay the city tax obediently?"

The merchants of the Tang Dynasty are not accustomed to paying taxes.

For a long time, Datang did not even have a formal commercial tax.

It is no wonder that Li Kuan cares about the difficulty of collecting taxes.

To put it bluntly, there is a cost to collecting taxes, and if it is very strenuous, then this tax will not be a stable income after all.

"At first, there were still some people who were lucky, but after the city ship sailor successively wiped out a few ships that did not fly the order flag awarded by the city ship division, everyone slowly became honest. In addition, all the way to the south, Mingzhou, Quanzhou, Guangzhou, these major ports, all have a city shipping department, even if these maritime merchants have escaped the supervision of our Hangzhou shipping department, it is difficult to avoid the latter series of passes. However, if it is found that there is a trade at sea without the permission of the city shipping department, all the goods on board will be confiscated. ”

Lu Quan is still very familiar with his own business.

"Glass mirrors, crystal products, porcelain, silk, wool thread, tea, these things should be encouraged more by the city. Ships transporting grain, ores, and grain from overseas are exempt from the city tax. But ships like those transporting spices and treasures can raise the standard of levy. You will take the lead in discussing the specific regulations with the cities of several state capitals, and they will be implemented next year. ”

Regardless of whether it is an export or an import, the municipal tax is levied according to the same standard, which is obviously unreasonable.

In order to facilitate management and make taxation simpler, the rule of ten taxes and one tax was simply and rudely set.

Now that the city is fully on track, it's time to adjust the import and export taxes on different commodities.

For example, luxury goods are definitely discouraged from being imported, so they should be taxed more.

However, in the case of exports, although some things are also profiteering, for the purpose of encouraging foreign trade exports, it is possible to appropriately consider reducing the market tax.

Otherwise, the Governor's Mansion of the City will collect more than 2 million yuan of city taxes a year, and none of these taxes will enter the household department.

Although this is what everyone agreed before, it will eventually make the people of the household department red-eyed.

Li Kuan's original intention was not to collect money for himself through the city, but to manage foreign trade through such an institution and provide a more stable source of tax revenue for the imperial court.

You can't keep letting the big guys in the court keep their eyes on those few acres of land.

"Lord Wang, my subordinates have this intention. Everything is taxed according to the same standard, which is simple, but I always feel that some maritime merchants will take advantage of it, and some maritime merchants will suffer. ”

Lu Quan has been working in several city departments in the past few years, and he naturally has a deep understanding of the situation that Li Kuan said.

"How's the development of the City Sailor?"

The water master is a shadow under Li Kuanbu, and he may use it at some point.

In addition, if you want to vigorously develop maritime trade, you must have the corresponding sailor strength, otherwise you will become a fat sheep in the eyes of others.

"Lord Wang, now Dengzhou, Hangzhou, and Quanzhou have special city sailors stationed for a long time, a total of twelve clippers of different sizes, and more than 600 well-trained officers and soldiers, which effectively deters those maritime merchants."

Lu Quan remembers very well that it was by relying on the fleet led by Zhou Fu that the Hangzhou maritime merchant Ma Biao's sea ship was intercepted and killed in Hangzhou Bay, which gave the Hangzhou maritime merchant a heavy lesson, and the Hangzhou City Maritime Division began to gain a firm foothold.

Therefore, in recent years, he has also supported the development of the city's sailors.

"Too little!"

Li Kuan frowned dissatisfiedly.

"Lord Wang, the main reason is that ships are too tight now, although the East China Sea Fishery has also set up a new shipbuilding workshop in Quanzhou, but the ships still can't keep up with the pace of demand."

Lu Quan hurriedly explained.

"If there are not enough ships, we should build a few more workshops. In both Hangzhou and Guangzhou, a shipbuilding workshop for clippers can be built, and then the development of the city's naval division will be intensified, and by this time next year, the naval division will have at least 30 ships and 2,000 officers and men. ”

Li Kuan knew that when Zheng He of the Ming Dynasty went to the West in later generations, he would take twenty or thirty thousand people with him every time.

Now the scale of Datang's sailors is far worse than that.

Now that the East China Sea fishery has been vigorously building up the power of the water division, it is necessary to further radiate to the entire South Sea.

In both Puluozhong and Yazhou, it is necessary to station a group of sailors for a long time, and even in Champa and Zhenla, permanent sailors can be considered.

Datang's interests in Nanyang cannot be maintained by relying on exquisite goods.

In particular, the rise of the Great Food Kingdom (based on special considerations, the Great Food in Tang history will be used to replace the Arab Empire in the future) is very fast, and it is difficult to guarantee that the maritime merchants who will not be interested in the Tang Dynasty will obtain huge profits.

"Lord Wang, please rest assured, the shipbuilding workshop has now trained a lot of skilled craftsmen, and once the construction of a new clipper ship begins, it will soon be launched."

Li Kuan supported the development of the city's sailors, and Lu Quan was naturally happy to see it.

To a certain extent, the stronger the power of the city's sailors, the greater the influence of the city's sailors, and the more those maritime merchants dare not disobey the yang and the yin.

……

In the western foothills of West Lake, there is a village, also called Longjing Village.

The largest tea plantation in the Chu Wangfu is in Longjing Village.

Wu Meiniang: "Lord Wang, the Longjing fragrant tea produced in Hangzhou is often the plum number or orchid number in the Meilan bamboo chrysanthemum, and the quality is much better than that of Chang'an City." It seems that the climate and soil here should be more suitable for the growth of tea trees. ”

After Li Kuan arrived in Hangzhou, he socialized for a few days, and in the company of the comer, he changed into civilian clothes and went to Longjing Village to see the situation of the tea plantation.

"Miss Wu is right, this Hangzhou, it is really suitable for the growth of tea, especially this Longjing Village, but also because of our Longjing fragrant tea and named, the village is surrounded by mountains, showing a trend of high in the north and low in the south, we have more than 600 acres of high-quality tea plantations here."

As the main source of plum Longjing fragrant tea in the tea workshop of Chu Wangfu, the situation of Longjing Village is naturally very familiar.

Although it is not the largest tea garden in the Chu Palace, it is of the best quality.

"It's true, around this Longjing Village, the mountains overlap, the forests are lush, the terrain is high in the north and low in the south, which can not only block the cold of the northern winter, but also intercept the humid heat from the south in summer, and it seems that the clouds and mist are everywhere, providing unique natural conditions for the tea tree."

Li Kuan had been to this Longjing Village twice in his previous life.

Walking all the way up from the Nine Creek Smoke Tree, you can see tea trees everywhere.

"Lord Wang, there seems to be a crowd gathering in the village ahead, in order to prevent accidents, my subordinates will go over to investigate first and then the Lord will move forward."

Wang Xuanwu had good eyesight, and at a glance he saw a group of people in front of a brick house in the village.

"Huh? This is the house of the village Zheng Xu three times, I heard that during this time, several people in his family have been sick one after another, could it be that something happened today? ”

The party is still very familiar with the situation in Longjing Village, especially the house in Longjing Village in front of him, he is even more familiar.

"Let's go, go over and have a look!"

Li Kuan was sure that the gathering of these people had nothing to do with him, and there could be no such scene as digging a pit and waiting for him to jump or an assassin ambush.

Besides, there are two masters Xi Junmai and Wang Xuanwu around him, what is there to be afraid of in the mountains and wilderness?

"Come to the shopkeeper, are you here? The old fairy is casting a spell now, why don't you wait a little longer before you go over? ”

Before he got close to the crowd, a simple man greeted him.

"Spellcasting?" The face of the party showed doubt.

"That's right, the old fairy said that there was an evil thing in the village house, and he was using an immortal method to catch the evil thing. As long as this evil thing is caught, the Muramasa family will not get sick every once in a while. ”

Obviously, this man is convinced of the Taoist priest's spell casting to catch evil spirits.

This can't be simply described as stupid.

You must know that even when Li Kuan crosses back and returns, there are still many people in the countryside who pay attention to these.

A distant relative of Li Kuan's own, because a cousin in his fifties died within a year, and then his cousin had a car accident, and his cousin's son was hit by a car again, and then their family invited "Mr." to come to their house to see feng shui and drive away evil spirits.

This kind of thing has always been very marketable in rural areas.

Especially in Guangdong and Fujian, I believe in these.

"I've never seen this old immortal cast spells, can you allow us to observe them too?"

Li Kuan naturally didn't believe in the saying that he was always casting spells to catch evil spirits, but he didn't insist on reasoning with this man.

No matter which feudal dynasty it is, the rule of the government is basically only at the county level.

Even in the county, only a few positions such as county commanders, county officials, and county lieutenants belong to civil servants, and the others are just officials.

As for the townships, villages, or squares below the county, they are basically managed by each locality itself.

Since a village is often lived together by a clan, the affairs in the village are basically the patriarch who has the final say, and the village chief is often the patriarch.

It was not until after the founding of the People's Republic of China that there was a real change in this situation.

"Xu Gouzi, I finally brought someone to the village to go around, you can't let us wait here, right? Don't worry, we won't bother the old immortals. ”

The party saw that Li Kuan was interested in the old fairy catching evil spirits, so he naturally wanted to negotiate one or two.

"That'...... Then you have to be quiet, but don't disturb the old immortals. ”

More than half of the people in Longjing Village are planting tea for the Chu Palace, and Xu Gouzi naturally doesn't dare to disobey the meaning of the party.

"The old immortal casts a spell, this is the first time I've heard of this, Wu Langjun, let's hurry up and take a look."

Gu Panpan couldn't help but be curious, and when he heard Xu Gouzi allow everyone to go over, he immediately stepped out of his long legs.

Li Kuan looked at the slender body, except for the disadvantage that Boeing 787 and Airbus A380 can be docked at will in front, her figure really has no choice.