42 In the early spring of February, it was warm and cold at first, and the quiet wharf in the past had some movement early. This wharf is the riverside wharf of Ziyang County, facing the Tuojiang River, three miles away from the county seat, along the river is a fairly spacious dirt road, which is the official road parallel to the Tuojiang River. The official road forks in a T-shape at the wharf, connecting the county seat to the north and the wharf.

Across the wharf is a mule, horse and livestock market, and next to it is a large row of shops of various kinds. Across the five facades from the Luoma Market is a bamboo weaving and pottery shop, which is diagonally opposite the wharf, and it is about 30 steps away from the wharf. This shop has been open for several years, and although the business is not very good, it is still passable. In the past two days, I saw that the proprietor of this shop had hired a car, beckoning his men to move things out one by one, all kinds of bamboo baskets, dustpans, large and small clay pots, and dishes were piled up in a cart.

"Be careful, put the big ones down, don't stack them with the small ones." The proprietor frowned, shouting at the guy from time to time. "Alas, Wang Dongjia, what's going on? Didn't do a good deal? "Wanderers with good things come to inquire, "Why don't you do it, just move to the front, it's cheaper there." He casually pointed in the direction of the county seat. What's cheap? You say it's cheaper in town? Alas, this is your own shop, don't you make a shop that runs away to tenant other houses? A tooth who has been begging for a living on the docks all year round asked. Well, my own tenant went out, and I went to rent something else. Wang Dongjia said as he instructed the men to pull the car away. Oh? Eat the difference, Wang Dongjia, you have made a lot of money, right? "Which tenant is it?" What do you do? Someone asked again, Wang Dongjia smiled and waved his hand, "I don't know, I don't know." So he drove the car away, leaving behind the melon-eating crowd in one place. "This old boy has really made a lot of money, look at his smiling face!" Someone pondered.

Zhou Dao had taken a fancy to this land early in the morning, and he, Xu Wa'er, Chen Carpenter, and Feng Yi pretended to be passers-by, and walked back and forth from here to the county for several days, and finally settled on the site. What is this place, this is the wharf, to put it bluntly, this is the meeting point of land and water leading to the county seat, three miles from the county seat, not far or near. Selling grain in the city here, it is not convenient, grain and rice have to be eaten every day, the city is not big but there are several grain shops, who wants to go out of the city and walk several miles to carry grain? Besides, the city gates will have to be closed sooner or later. However, if the grain is collected here, regardless of land and water, the grain transported to the county seat from the upstream and downstream and the surrounding townships must pass in front of his thoughtful nose! So what can he do? Robbing? No, what he's going to do is cut off his beard. It was a phenomenon he had discovered a long time ago that inspired him.

Zhou Dao often took a boat from the wharf of Zhuxi Town to the county seat, and the landing is this wharf, this wharf and Ziyang City do not know who comes first and who is behind, it is more than a hundred years of history, the water is deep here, and the larger ship can be docked, although it is far less than the state city of one hundred and ten miles away in the lower reaches of the Tuojiang River, but it is also a good port. Zhou Dao often saw on the wharf that the traders docked here with full loads of goods were surrounded by a few or more than a dozen tooth people, although it was not said that they were forced to buy and sell, but the docked shippers had little room for bargaining. These tooth people have something to do with each other and are entangled with the merchants in the city. In addition, there is an unwritten rule between the tooth people, and they work together to reduce the price. In short, as long as they want to sell the goods here, they will be scraped with a layer of skin.

Among them, grain trading has always been the most important, there are four local grain merchants, and most of their shops are in the city, after all, to sell grain to people in the city, they have to sell it in the county. However, the largest grain store in the county has a semicolon on the wharf, mainly to collect grain, but the location is a little biased, and it is not big.

Zhou Dao's plan is to directly set up the grain number on the wharf, remove the intermediate link of the tooth man in the local grain collection, so as to reduce the cost, and then decide whether to set up a grain store in the city according to the business situation. He believes that occupying a favorable position in the food supply is an important factor in the success or failure of the business.

The wharf is the main road of water and land transportation, and the grain collection here can not only meet the demand for grain in the county, but also the key is the state capital downstream hundreds of miles away. There is also the Zhuxi River through Zhuxi Town to the north into the Tuojiang River, to the upstream northwest to Ziyang City, to the downstream southeast to the state capital, through the county wharf and the small wharf on his Zhuxi Town, he can intervene in the upstream supply of the two water systems, the transportation is convenient, the cost is relatively low, if you can make the amount can affect or eventually dominate the food price in the region, this is his idea.

Originally, Zhou Dao took a fancy to the mule and horse market facing the wharf, but after thinking about it, he changed his mind, first of all, it was big, and the business was passable, if he wanted to rent it, he couldn't afford it. Secondly, this site is made up of three plots of land by four owners, which is time-consuming and expensive to win. The most important thing is that Carpenter Chen thinks that this place is not to be taken, the smell is too big, this livestock market has been formed for decades, and the accumulated fishy smell and fecal smell have been immersed in the beams and pillars, sinking into the soil, and it is not possible to tear them all down and start over, at least not to sell grain. The bamboo weaving shop they finally selected is suitable for the size of the distance, close to the poultry and livestock away from the wharf, and it is not small, which belongs to the model of the front shop and the back factory. In addition to the large open room frontage on the street, there is a large courtyard behind the house, which has both a house and a storehouse, and on weekdays, five or six men are hired to compile all kinds of bamboo utensils all day long, and sell them to the county seat or the state town downstream. After reading it, they suppressed the eagerness in their hearts, and bargained with the landlord, who is the owner of the bamboo weaving workshop, several times. Looking at the Wang Dongjia, who was always reluctant, Zhou Dao gave him a price that he couldn't refuse to buy the store, eighty yuan per year, with a lease term of six years and half a year, which was a long cut higher than others.

A few days later, the grain number of Zhou Dao began to be rebuilt, and the large structure was basically unchanged, except that the façade was renovated, and the facilities were added as needed, and six granaries were built in the backyard, and a row of houses large enough for twenty people, and the kitchen and latrine were expanded. They are all blue and white tiled houses, and Zhou Dao has learned the lesson of the last time he was set on fire, and safety comes first.

He had discussed with Carpenter Chen before, and the ones included in Zhuxi Town this time were still the old rules: pay half first, and pay the rest slowly. Zhou Dao is now short of money and time, according to the best time for him to open a grain number is in the autumn of each year, and when a large number of new grain is on the market, the price of rice is also low at this time, which is suitable for hoarding rice into storage. But he couldn't wait and didn't want to wait, he told Xu Wa'er that in addition to selling part of the millet exchanged for wages and other necessary expenses, the rest of the grain was hoarded as much as possible, and the insufficient ones were bought and sold while seeing.