On 20 March, the second branch of the Jinqi Bank in the Tianjin Acropolis was opened. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info The people of Tianjin Acropolis then had a place to exchange silver for banknotes, and they were very enthusiastic.

This banknote can be used for one tael of silver for one tael of silver when paying taxes. Whether it is to pay land tax or commercial tax, it can be used. The people who changed the banknotes in front took the banknotes to the "tax bureau" to pay taxes, and found that they were really easy to use, and the tax bureau of Jinguo Gong did recognize this kind of banknotes.

In other words, these two "banknotes" look like one tael, but they are actually one tael or two cents of silver. Take ten taels of silver and exchange them for banknotes, and you will immediately earn two pieces of silver. As a result, there was an endless stream of people who came to exchange money, and many people gradually discovered that this silver note was also very easy to use as money, and merchants were happy to accept this kind of money.

Compared with silver and copper coins, this banknote is much more convenient to use and carry. Coupled with the vigorous publicity of the newspapers, more and more people in the streets and alleys of Tianjin began to use the "banknotes" of Jinqi Bank for transactions.

In fact, the development of the commodity economy of the Ming Dynasty by the end of the Ming Dynasty was in great need of a convenient and easy-to-use currency. During the Song Dynasty, the banknote "Jiaozi" was very successful. It can be seen that the demand for banknotes is actually very urgent among the people, and the key to the problem is whether the issuer abides by the rules and whether it is issued indiscriminately.

The style and prestige of Li Zhi, the Duke of Jinguo, are placed here, which makes the people believe in the banknotes issued by the Duke of Jinguo.

Not only that, Jinqi Bank also launched a mortgage business on March 20.

The so-called loan is nothing more than borrowing money with real estate collateral. The newspaper carried a headline on the front page that day, and the people immediately understood. Newspapers have repeatedly emphasized the characteristics of this kind of loan business -- low interest rates, and repeatedly stressed how the interest rate of 5 percent a year can benefit the people.

Gradually, merchants who are short of money began to come to the bank to inquire about loans.

As soon as I asked this question, many people pushed the boat to get the loan. Now that the judicial interpretation power in Tianjin and Shandong is in the hands of Li Zhi, there is no legal problem for the bank to handle mortgage matters. As long as Jinqi Bank signs a "contract" with the merchant who lends money, it can complete all the loan and mortgage matters.

The first person to take out a successful loan was a swineherd in Fanjiazhuang. This swineherd originally worked in Li Zhi's National Nutrition Pig Farm, and after working for a few years, he was already comfortable with pig raising, so he thought about going out to open his own pig farm. In recent years, Tianjin people have become richer day by day, pork prices are very strong, and pig farming seems to be a profitable business.

Pig farms need to build pigsties, buy pig seedlings, buy feed, and use money everywhere, and when he was short of money, he heard that the bank could borrow money, so he found Jinqi Bank.

He took his small villa as collateral and mortgaged it to the bank at a market value of 70 taels, and the bank lent him 50 taels of silver -- the bank could only lend 70 percent of the value of the collateral in order to control the risk. After all, banks are buying and selling at low interest rates, and they need to prevent the value of collateral from falling sharply, resulting in bad debts.

As soon as the swineherd got the loan, he started his small pig farm. The pig farm seems to be very smooth, and the bill is calculated, and when the pigs are slaughtered, the pig boss can earn more than 60 taels of silver. This kind of income is much stronger than being a swineherd.

The successful case of Boss Pig was vigorously publicized by Tianjin Daily and Shandong Daily, so more and more people came to the bank for loans.

The largest loan of the Jinqi Bank in March was to an enlightened landowner.

This landlord's surname is Chen, he has no fame, and he is a small landlord. He had been bribing government officials in Qingxian County before, so he was not pressed too much land by the officials, and he has always guarded the family's ancestral business. At the beginning, Li Zhijun leveled the field endowment, and his family's field endowment was not exempted in the first place, and there was no phenomenon of Diao people's contributions, so it had no impact. After Li Zhi completely took control of Tianjin, he began to take the initiative to move closer to Li Zhi.

When he heard that Li Zhi encouraged him to borrow money from banks and to develop water conservancy, he simply borrowed 5,000 taels of silver from Li Zhi to build a reservoir in Qingxian County to irrigate 1,500 mu of wasteland.

Nowadays, the whole of Tianjin is under the management of the court, and the social order is very orderly. The original social atmosphere of you making cakes and grabbing cakes and using power to seize the fruits of others has been completely eliminated. Nowadays, all parts of Tianjin, whether they are enlightened landlords or yeoman farmers, have set off an upsurge in water conservancy construction. Nowadays, whoever builds the water conservancy project will benefit.

Therefore, the landlord surnamed Chen simply took out a loan to build a water conservancy project.

The 5,000 taels of water conservancy facilities are not trivial, and they involve a series of work such as buying wasteland, building reservoirs, digging canals, and recruiting tenant farmers for farming. This gentleman surnamed Chen came prepared and hired several experienced water conservancy technicians. Yue Shande chatted with the gentry surnamed Chen for an hour, and personally agreed to the loan.

The loan was secured by the land of the gentry surnamed Chen. The appraiser of the bank's loan department paid 13 taels of silver for one mu of dry land, and finally asked the gentry surnamed Chen to take 600 mu of dry land out as collateral.

The loan department was resolute and resolute, received the loan demand on March 22, and completed the procedures on the first day of April and put the loan down. The landlord, surnamed Chen, immediately began to hire people to build the reservoir, saying that he would build the reservoir and canal before the winter wheat was planted in September.

This water conservancy project was also reported in the Tianjin Daily as a typical case. As a result, in April, the Jinqi Bank received many loan requests from landlords, yeoman farmers, and even tenant farmers for water conservancy projects. Many of them are highly operable projects.

There were even seven small landowners who jointly borrowed 40,000 taels of silver to build water and irrigate the fields.

In order to evaluate these projects, Li Zhi even asked Jing Yishan, who was engaged in water conservancy in Shandong, to bring in five veteran technicians to serve as appraisers for water conservancy project loans.

Not only are there many loan projects for water conservancy projects, but also for various aquaculture, construction and traditional handicraft industries. Nowadays, the income of the people in a town in Tianjin is getting higher and higher year by year, and the demand for various products is rising.

The original gentry who made a fortune purely by donating land to the people had been suppressed by Li Zhi, and they had completely lost their former wealth and power. Some of them have no other skills than to bully others, and now they even live entirely on their previous savings, and even food and clothing have become a problem in the past few years.

And some landlords, yeoman farmers, tenant farmers, livestock farmers and craftsmen who were good at management and had a vision ushered in the opportunity for development under Li Zhi's rule. With the support of the bank, these far-sighted new-style talents can gradually become stronger and bigger, and develop Tianjin's agriculture, aquaculture, and handicraft production.

And Li Zhi's Jinqi Bank is the catalyst for these new talents to quickly succeed. Projects, farms and artisanal workshops that used to require years of accumulation of wealth are now no longer the subject of waiting. As long as you take out your family's house and land as collateral, you can get a loan immediately.

And because Li Zhi's Jinqi Bank has real estate as collateral, it basically does not take any risk in issuing these loans.

As one loan after another was issued, one project after another started in Tianjin. Tianjin under Li Zhi's rule is becoming more and more prosperous.

Li Zhi believes that with the gradual expansion of banking business to Shandong, Shandong will usher in a period of development like Tianjin.