Yang Xin and Huang Ying walked slowly through the reeds with a small sampan, and Huang Zhen vigilantly searched the surroundings.

All three remained silent.

It's a head-killing deal......

Uh, it doesn't matter to Yang Xin, the private salt is to hang it once, he has already hung a noose above his head, and he doesn't care about another one, as for Huang Zhen's father and daughter, it is estimated that there are already many of them. It is no wonder that both Huang Zhen and Huang Ying are disdainful of his status as a fugitive death row prisoner, and that little can indeed be disdained for those who sell smuggled salt. It can also explain why Huang Zhen welcomes him so much, for a smuggled salt seller, a fugitive death row prisoner is undoubtedly the best employee, and after adding his combat effectiveness, it can be said to be a treasure.

Yang Xin looked at Huang Ying's sexy little back with some complicated eyes.

Her dad is ruthless enough.

The daughter took the smuggled salt with her, and she didn't care about the noose one day, and the son fostered a relative's house to study and take the Xiucai exam, which was too big. And Huang Ying seems to take it for granted, so she followed her father to live this kind of life with her head on the belt of his pants, desperately just to be able to supply her younger brother to take the test Xiucai.

This is the traditional woman!

Hello traditional women!

Huang Ying in front of her twisted her small waist unnaturally, obviously she knew what Yang Xin was doing behind her.

At this time, the sampan silently turned into a reed-sandwiched alley, and a small sandbar appeared in front of it, where a stilted grass hut stood like a desert island survival, but it was constantly shaking regularly. A little bare-bottomed girl was happily building sandcastles in the sand in front of the hut, and when she saw them, she immediately cheered, and then jumped into the water, like a little frog, and reached the side of the boat in a blink of an eye.

"Sister Yingzi!"

She raised her head and looked at Huang Ying and said.

Huang Ying smiled and took out a packet of sugar wrapped in oiled paper and handed it to her.

This thing is not very expensive in Daming, at least it is not a luxury, and the common people can afford to eat it, according to the current price, a catty costs about six cents of silver, which is equivalent to more than seven catties of fine flour. However, flour in this era is more expensive than rice, a pound of flour is eight cents, and rice is much lower, even if japonica rice is more than seven dollars and one stone, which is equivalent to more than four and a half cents per catty. Of course, the price of rice varies greatly in the region, Guangzhou Doumi 20 Wen, it is also a penny of silver outcropping, at this time one or two silver can be exchanged for more than 1,500 Wen, Wanli Tongbao is four grams, and copper is worth nine and four cents of silver.

The price of rice in Liaodong has now reached more than two taels.

However, 8% is the face price.

At this time, too much labor cost is added to the high-quality white flour, and wheat is cheaper than rice.

"Boss Huang, this brother is alive!"

A stout man in a ragged coat jumped out of the shed while talking, and behind him a woman could be seen dressing from behind the straw curtain.

Huang Ying hurriedly turned his head.

Then I saw a clear smile on Yang Xin's face.

Her face turned redder.

"Hurry up and get down to business!"

Huang Zhen looked at the man speechlessly and said.

The latter shouted into the shed, and then jumped on his sampan, and the little girl returned to the beach with the sugar, and quickly ran to the shed and climbed up like a monkey.

"The sky is the quilt, the ground is the bed, this uncle lives freely!"

Yang Xin said with emotion.

"Well, I'm actually poor!"

The man was stunned for a moment and said.

"This little brother is literate and hyphenated?"

He then asked.

"If you can recognize it, you can recognize eight or nine without leaving ten, and even fewer words can be written!"

Yang Xin replied.

Traditional Chinese characters are not too difficult to understand, at least the vast majority of guesses can also guess, but it really can't be written, in fact, don't talk about traditional characters, that is, simplified Chinese characters because he is used to knocking a lot of handwriting and forget, at least you have to think about it.

"That's amazing, too!"

The man said.

"Under Yang Xin!"

Yang Xin arched his hand at him and said.

"Miao Er, I'm not much older than you, let's just talk about brothers!"

Miao Er said.

As they spoke, the two small sampans continued to walk through the reeds, and soon the outside became brighter, and the sky was filled with smoke, and when they turned a corner, the smell of the sea breeze came to their faces. In the vast and gentle coastal mudflats, the sea water is exposed to the sun by ridges like farmland, and among these salt fields are broken grass huts, almost all of which have smoking chimneys. In the grass huts and salt fields, there are busy stove households, and in some of the salt pans that are almost sun-burned, even men, women, and children are all scraping these gray-white plant ashes attached to salt crystals on the ground with hard shells. Other stoves that scrape out the ashes are poured into stone containers and re-added to the sun-dried seawater, allowing the salt crystals to leak into high-concentration brine, which is then further filtered.

After filtration, it is sent to the huts, where the final salt boiling process takes place.

This is what salt is drying.

Half dried and half cooked, to be exact.

"Why don't you just do it?"

Yang Xin said suspiciously.

"There are also, the Cangzhou area has just begun to be implemented, there will not be many, most of them are still this old method, such salt pans need to be built separately, and the salt in the two Huai is much more dry!"

Huang Zhen said.

"These stoves are not much better than slender men!"

Yang Xin said with emotion.

Most of the busy stove owners were unkempt under the scorching sun, their hair and beards still had salt crystals like snow, most of them were wearing only a pair of calf nose pants, their bodies were tanned and chapped, most of them had various scars on their bodies, the high concentration of salt water was also harmful to their bodies, and there was not only sodium chloride in the seawater, and these messes were also concentrated while drying salt.

And they're all skinny.

If the slender man is just mechanically tired, the stove is tired and corroded.

The slender man is like the walking dead.

And they're like a bunch of walking dead in constant corrosion!

"The common people are the most miserable stove households!"

Huang Zhen said.

Yang Xin turned his head to look at him.

"It's not me who said it, this is what an official of the imperial court once said.

In fact, the stove households in the Taizu Hongwu years, the life is the best, at that time they can dry salt to get the cost of work, every stone introduced, free of all servitude, boiling salt also has the government specially allocated to them grassland, these grasslands can be reclaimed by themselves. The salt farm has an official warehouse that stores grain all year round to protect the stove households, and even the merchants who collect salt have to pay an extra amount of silver to the salt farm for relief.

Only the surplus salt shall not be sold privately.

After completing this lesson of the imperial court, the extra salt must also be given to the salt farm, and the amount of salt is still given to the labor grain, and it is not allowed to sell it privately. ”

Huang Zhen said.

"Employees of the state-run salt works?"

Yang Xin said.

It can also be said that the stove households only control the salt, and make salt and hand it over to the official warehouse of the salt factory, there are usually two kinds of warehouses, and the salt merchants take the salt to the Changgu warehouse to directly support the salt, and their salt is obtained by exchanging grain from the border towns, and the border towns will not be short of grain. Regardless of whether the stove households sell salt, they are salt producers and handed over to officials, and they can exchange grain from the official warehouse, and they can also cultivate and fish by themselves, but they need to complete the main salt class first. After completion, he was casual, and if he was willing to continue to make salt, he would continue to hand over the official warehouse as surplus salt for grain, and if he was unwilling, he would farm and fish. ”

Huang Zhen said.

"And now?"

Yang Xin asked.

"It's all silver, the salt law has changed again and again for more than 200 years, and every time the stove households suffer losses, to the forty-fifth year of Wanli to line the salt law, the salt merchants take the salt to find the stove households to collect salt, and the stove households sell salt for silver and then use the silver to buy grain, and the original salt is changed to silver to compensate. It's good to have other sources of livelihood, but if there is no other source of livelihood, and stove households who can only buy rice for the pot by selling salt, can there be a way to bargain with salt merchants? When officials come to the door with shackles to demand the payment of the main payment, do they have any other choice?

In short, the stove is resigned to fate. ”

Huang Zhen said.

"This is the market economy!"

Yang Xin said with a smile.

"Well, this word is quite vivid, everything is based on the market economy, but in essence it is the economy of profiteers and corrupt officials, from the hands of the stove household can buy more than a thousand catties of silver, to the capital is five cents of silver a catty, less than four hundred miles five times more. This is still the convenience of the waterway in the capital, but also in some salt farms with convenient water transportation, if those remote salt farms can buy nearly 2,000 catties in one or two, and the inland 400 miles of the waterway is not smooth can be increased tenfold.

Do you know how many times the price of official salt can be increased when Huai salt is transported to Huguang?

Sixty times.

More than 1,200 catties of Huai salt in the salt field can be sold for up to six cents of silver in Huguang.

And it is mixed with up to three percent of sand.

But if it weren't for that, we wouldn't have this way to get rich, they would have increased the price by five, ten, and sixty, and we would have doubled it by three or four times, and we wouldn't mix it with sand! If it is the same as the time of Taizu, no matter what is left over from the main class, it will be returned to the official warehouse, and the stove households will be able to have enough food and clothing by paying the salt, who will risk killing the head to sell the salt to us? The market economy is good, the market economy has us, and without the market economy, we have to drink the northwest wind! ”

Huang Zhen said.

"Caught?"

Yang Xin asked.

"Caught? Who's going to catch it? From Tianjin to Yuanjiakou, all the cards along the way know that I am selling salt, but no one will catch it, just give them benefits, I will transport the salt to the official salt ten times more than the place to sell it quadruple, take out one of the dots, I can still earn twice the profit. At least seventy percent of the salt in the Ming Dynasty was private salt, and the salt merchants were selling smuggled salt, the local gentry were selling smuggled salt, and even the officials under the salt patrol were selling smuggled salt. My small boat is nothing, and the two Huai smuggler salt dealers are like sailors with hundreds of boats in a formation to rush to the card, and the officers and soldiers of the imperial court do not dare to stop it. You remember, the government doesn't have to pay attention to it at all, the silver is unimpeded, and there is no way for the Ming Dynasty to be unblocked.

But I'm afraid of peers, peers are enemies.

What is smuggling?

Smuggling is lawlessness! ”

Huang Zhen patted Yang Xin on the shoulder and said.

At this time, Miao Er had already landed, he was actually the liaison of this stove household Zhuangzi, although the stove household was not afraid of being known by the salt farm officials, and they also had to give benefits to the salt farm officials, but this kind of thing was not above board after all, and a liaison to lead the way in the smuggling business was essential, and this kind of person was also called the leader.

Miao Er's duty is to lead the way.

His dilapidated shed was stuck at the throat of this waterway, but Huang Zhen was a regular customer, so he didn't need too much trouble.

It's not so easy for strangers

(Thank you for the book friend Spring Breeze Ten Miles is not as good as you 1, I am the reward of Cao Nima and others).