Ji Qingwen has traveled to the Ming Dynasty for three or four years, and he has already figured out the routines of these officials of the Ming Dynasty.

Shen Liangzuo is no exception.

As soon as he heard Ji Qingwen talk about the emperor, he immediately said, "No...... No...... Of course not, there is no such reason...... The miscellaneous family just wants to ask Lord Ji to help me for the sake of being an official in our same dynasty, and first lend me one hundred or twenty thousand taels of silver, which can be regarded as allowing the miscellaneous family to live a comfortable life for a few days......"

Ji Qingwen pretended to sigh and said, "Father-in-law, it's not that you don't want to help. It is really Songjiang Wharf that owes too much money to Suzhou Weaving Yamen, and I am afraid it will be difficult to lend money to the wharf. ”

What is this called?

Suzhou weaving yamen is in the management of your Ji Qingwen, and the dock of Dianshan Port is also built by your Ji Qingwen, but the left hand is changed to the right hand, and what can be said about owing?

So Shen Liangzuo asked, "Where did Lord Ji start with this?" Aren't these two businesses in the hands of Lord Ji? ”

Ji Qingwen said: "Don't forget, Gonggong Shen, the Suzhou weaving yamen has to pay a large amount of silk and silver to the emperor every year. The lower officials have the courage to do it, and they don't dare to use the money from the weaving yamen to engage in a loss-making business like the wharf without authorization. Therefore, I played a little trick and let the wharf 'temporarily borrow' the silver two operations of the weaving yamen, and these debts will be returned to the weaving yamen when the wharf earns money one day......"

The routine mentioned by Ji Qingwen was widely used in the government's construction of bridges, airports, highways and other large-scale projects in later generations - that is, to raise funds first, and then charge to repay the principal and interest of the funds, and the mortgage of the raised funds is large-scale projects and fixed assets that do not yet exist.

Considering that Shen Liangzuo was a Ming Dynasty man with a poor brain, Ji Qingwen did not explain the routine in too much detail, but it was enough to make Shen Liangzuo rush to be confused.

I saw that he was surprised for a long time, and then said, "This is ...... True...... It's incredible...... Lord Ji's method of settling accounts is really unheard of by the miscellaneous family......"

Ji Qingwen smiled and said: "Usually, there are two accounts and two accounts. But it's really two accounts and two calculations, what's so hard to figure out? What's more, looking at Shen Gonggong's face, he has already suspended urging the dock to pay in arrears. Father-in-law, you see that you have been in office for almost a month, when have I ever begged for money from you? If it had been placed in the past, the wharf would have to put 20,000 taels of silver into the weaving yamen account every month! ”

Ji Qingwen's words were just temporary and casual remarks - anyway, the past accounts of the weaving yamen and Dianshan Wharf were firmly in Ji Qingwen's own hands, and he could say whatever he wanted.

And Shen Liangzuo rushed to Suzhou from Songjiang, originally to ask Ji Qingwen for some silver taels, but unexpectedly, in a few words, he owed Ji Qingwen 20,000 taels of silver every month.

Shen Liangzuo and Ji Qingwen talked about the kung fu of only two teas, and then returned to Songjiang Dianshan Port with a belly, and did not even spend the night.

When he returned to Dianshan Port, Shen Liangzuo, who did not get a tael of silver from Ji Qingwen, could only gather a few military advisors and strategists he had recruited locally in Jiangnan to discuss the next countermeasures.

Who knows that these so-called "Jiangnan talents" are all good looks, chanting the wind and making the moon, writing lyrics and composing poems are all full of skills, but they don't have the slightest real talent and real learning to help the people, and they discussed all night, but they can't come up with a good way to get twice the result with half the effort.

Thinking about it, there are only four clichés: "open source and reduce expenditure".

Open source is to increase the income of Dianshan Port. But the port of Dianshan is now separated from the management and management, and there is no other collection except for collecting tariffs from past maritime merchants. So Shen Liangzuo changed Ji Qingwen's rule of collecting money according to the length and tonnage of the ship, and instead collected taxes based on the value of the goods transported by merchant ships.

But the value of the commodity is justified by the public, and the mother-in-law says that the mother-in-law is reasonable, a piece of jadeite from Myanmar, you say it is worth 500 taels of silver, I say that you can only pickle pickles, everyone has their own reason, there is no unified standard at all. As a result, the maritime merchants could only seek ways to bribe Shen Liangzuo or his subordinate clerks and chief bookkeepers, begging them to open one eye and close one eye when counting the goods, and collect less tariffs.

It's hard to establish a strict set of rules, but it's easy to break them.

was made by Shen Liangzuo like this, and the originally orderly Dianshan Port Wharf in Songjiang Prefecture suddenly became a miasma - the honest maritime merchants had to pay several times more tariffs than before; While opportunistic maritime merchants have certainly gained a bargain in tariffs, the amount of bribes they can pay is not a small amount.

As a result, Dianshan Port has lost a lot of its core competitiveness of low tariffs and free trade compared with other old seaports. If it weren't for the fact that the tribute silk produced by the Suzhou Weaving Yamen could only be purchased here, the maritime merchants who smelled the profits and acted faster than flies would have turned their sails and turned to other ports.

All in all, the matter of "open source" was reluctantly handled by Shen Liangzuo.

But "throttling" is not so easy to do.

The so-called "throttling" is to try to save unnecessary expenses and costs.

The cost of the terminal is mainly divided into two parts - one is the cost of daily repair and maintenance of the terminal; The second is the daily wages and benefits of the more than 1,500 dock workers employed on the wharf.

Regarding the first item, before Ji Qingwen left Nanjing at the beginning of the year, he had already allocated enough silver taels to renovate and expand the already very strong wharf, and the wharf was the same as the newly built one inside and out, so this money could naturally be saved temporarily.

The second item is something that can never be saved.

When Ji Qingwen heard that the emperor had sent Shen Liangzuo to be his boss, he deliberately wanted to embarrass him, so he deliberately raised the monthly salary of dock workers to ten taels of silver per month. Thus a total of 1,500 workers, plus some rewards and allowances, would have to cost 30,000 taels of silver a month to feed this group.

So Shen Liangzuo thought about cutting the money from these people, and planned to halve the monthly silver every month. In this way, after the increase in customs duties, minus the salary expenses, the wharf can still have a balance every month, which can make Shen Liangzuo's life a little more comfortable.

But these dock workers were originally rebellious people in Shaanxi, and it was easy to talk about the foundation of the rebellion with King Gao Yingxiang and Li Zicheng, the general of the storm?

As soon as they heard that their wages were not increasing but decreasing, they were immediately displeased. Several leaders discussed it in the middle of the night, and the next day they blocked the port cofferdam, and prevented all sea ships from entering and leaving the port.

Shen Liangzuo is the chief eunuch of the ceremonial superintendent, and he has also been in charge of the army, and he has been the admiral of Jiumen for a while in the "change of his own si" in the siege of the capital division of the Manchurian Eight Banners, and he is quite calm when he sees such a scene.

So he ordered the 2,000 soldiers of the Beijing battalion stationed outside the cofferdam to enter the city and arrest all the dock workers who were making trouble.

But these dock workers have been prepared for a long time, and the entrance to the cofferdam was closed as soon as possible, and the people inside could not get out, and the people outside could not enter.

After being besieged by the dock for two days, Shen Liangzuo finally gave in and promised the dock workers that they could keep their wages unchanged.

But Shen's father-in-law's reputation was bankrupt, and none of the workers downstairs believed his words.

In desperation, Shen Liangzuo could only take a step back and said that he could ask the dock workers to send a representative to ask Ji Qingwen to come over to coordinate the matter.

For these dock workers, Ji Qingwen is also a life-saver, and a parent of food and clothing, and it is naturally acceptable for him to coordinate in the middle.

So the dock workers continued to surround Shen Liangzuo, and sent people who were competent and fair to Suzhou to invite Ji Qingwen over.

Ji Qingwen was really overjoyed and surprised when he heard the news.