"Miss is not old, otherwise Miss would not be Miss, but the second shopkeeper is really the second shopkeeper", the man smiled shallowly at any time. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

"Yishan, you are becoming more and more dishonest, and you have begun to speak sharply, it seems that you have not learned other skills in following the third uncle and them over the years, but people have become sleek, our Xiao family is full of sleek and coppery people, I originally thought you were an alternative, but I didn't expect you to become like this", the woman pretended to be angry and said.

The man's surname is Xiao Mingshan, and he is a member of the Xiao family in Wujiang County, Suzhou Prefecture.

"Siqi, Lushun City is really dangerous, you shouldn't come this time", Xiao Yishan called out the woman's name, his eyes and tone full of worry.

Hey, the woman sighed softly, I don't know if it was because Xiao Yishan didn't take her joke and was bored or because it touched her other emotions.

The woman's surname is also Xiao, her name is Siqi, the eldest lady of Xiao's family room in Wujiang, Suzhou.

The two have the same surname but are not brothers and sisters, but their friendship is better than that of their own brothers and sisters, Xiao Yishan is the son of the Xiao family, and his father is the head of the previous generation of the Xiao family, that is, the eldest companion of Xiao Siqi's grandfather.

"Lushun City is dangerous, is Suzhou safe", thinking of the recent rumors in Suzhou Mansion and the exhortations of the uncle and the elders of the Xiao family, Xiao Siqi felt a little unhappy.

"After all, Suzhou is the land of family power, and Lushun City is indeed the city of tigers and wolves", Xiao Yishan could hear the exhaustion and helplessness in Xiao Siqi's words, but he knew that the current undercurrent in Lushun City was surging, and the people behind it were by no means good people who could intercept the caravan of the Xiao family this time, if Xiao Siqi had any accidents here, he would never dare to imagine.

"But sometimes rumors are as fierce as tigers, aren't they", Xiao Siqi stubbornly raised her head.

Looking at this girl who is like his own sister, Xiao Yishan can't help but feel soft in his heart, and he said that the scenery of the wealthy family is infinite, and as the eldest lady of the Xiao family, it should be enviable, but the pressure and responsibility he bears in the heart can only be truly understood by him, the eldest brother who grew up together.

"Over the years, it's hard for you", although there was such an impulse, but in the end he didn't touch her head as often as he did when he was a child to comfort and care, that emotion was forcibly dispersed by him, and finally only turned into a sigh.

"Yishan, let's not talk about these things, let's talk about the situation of that batch of goods", as if she didn't want to be caught in some kind of emotion, Xiao Siqi retracted the inherent little daughter posture, and re-became the second shopkeeper of the Xiao family in order to make the Xiao family impressed and feared.

Seeing Xiao Siqi so persistent, Xiao Yishan knew that he could not persuade this woman who had taken over the Xiao family's northern business affairs for less than three years and let the Xiao family's business establish a foothold in the north and open up the situation.

"Now it is basically certain that the instigator behind it is Cui Zuyao, a guerrilla in Nancheng, where the Xiao family's goods are currently hidden, and it has not been inquired about for the time being, it happened too suddenly, and no one thought that the chief military officer of Dongjiang Town would be killed by the superintendent Yuan Chonghuan with such a result."

"How much is the loss this time", Xiao Siqi asked bluntly.

"This batch of goods is about 55,000 taels of silver, mainly because of the blockade of the Dengzhou Navy at the beginning of the year, can not be sent to Lushun, we were forced to hoard several batches of goods in the Dengzhou warehouse, until not long ago to open up the relationship here, only a one-time 8,000 cotton cloth, 3,000 catties of new tea, 5,000 tons of grain and the inventory of sugar, porcelain all shipped, I thought it was foolproof, but I didn't expect Mao Wenlong to be killed suddenly, our goods were detained in the port on the same day, Fu Bo They are now missing...... It's all my fault for being too rash, if I hadn't been in such a hurry to ship at that time, I wouldn't have been in the situation like today", Xiao Yishan had a look of self-reproach.

"You can't be blamed for this, this kind of risk was already thought of when this trade route was opened, and besides, this change in Dongjiang Town is not only you, I don't think anyone would have expected it"

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the smuggling trade in the border areas was the most active stage in the past dynasties, but all the merchants and families with some background and ways would participate in it, because the interests of smuggling were the greatest, and the merchants pursued profits, and there were double the profits, and some people took risks, and there were ten times the profits, and some people dared to take the risk of killing their heads, and dared to trample on all the laws of the imperial court, not to mention that the Ming bureaucrats were corrupt, as long as they found the right way to do a good job, the returns were often several times or even dozens of times.

In the Ming Dynasty, the folk silk weaving industry, cotton textile industry, porcelain industry, sugar industry, paper industry, and printing technology were all very developed. During this period, there were not only new breakthroughs in technology, but also a great development in the scale of production, such as the improvement of the cotton textile industry's tool churning wheel, spinning wheel, and loom, and the sugar industry has invented the sugar wheel. Relying on the expanding demand for commodity markets, regional production centers of folk handicrafts began to appear, such as Suzhou, Hangzhou silk, Huzhou raw silk, Jiangxi Jingdezhen porcelain, Guangdong Foshan ironware, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi and other provinces of lacquerware and Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Sichuan and other provinces of a variety of paper products, etc., and the handicraft industry specialization tendency has deepened, such as Songjiang Mansion is known as "the two pieces of hange cloth are the world, although Suzhou and Hangzhou are not as good". ①

The increase in production is also accompanied by the increasing demand, the nomads in the north have low productivity, and in order to live, especially to meet the extravagant life of the Mongolian and Later Jin nobles, a large number of goods from the Central Plains and Jiangnan, such as tea, sugar, porcelain, ironware, etc., are needed.

The Xiao family is one of the top merchant families in Wujiang County and even Suzhou Prefecture, and there are as many as 11 or 2 silk weaving workshops, porcelain workshops, and tea gardens, and the trade network covers all parts of the south and southeast of the Yangtze River, and even sells to Annam, Ryukyu, Japan, and Nanyang. It's just that because of the dispute between the northern and southern merchant gangs, the Xiao family, as a faction of Zhejiang merchants, has been difficult to open up the situation in the north, until Xiao Siqi's father died, the Xiao family room pushed Xiao Siqi to the front desk in the twenty-eighth year without a man, and she did not live up to the expectations of the long house and her mother, and established a northern trade network in three years, and extended the business to the smuggling trade with the Houjin and Mongolian tribes through some obscure channels, and made a lot of profits, which established her unique position in the Xiao family.

"Yishan, I don't think this matter is so simple", Xiao Siqi thought for a while, and felt more and more that this matter was too strange, the smuggling route of the Xiao family has always been very hidden, for the sake of safety, she did not even hit the Xiao family's business, but she invested another money to establish a business named Feng Long, and in order to get through the relationship inside, she took the path of Wang Ting, the governor of Denglai.

"The second shopkeeper means that someone betrayed us?" , Looking at Xiao Siqi who was frowning, Xiao Yishan felt a little frightened.

(1): Quoting Guo Xueli of Nanchang University on "Analysis of the Reasons for the Rise of Private Overseas Smuggling Trade in the Ming Dynasty"