During the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, the wealthy Jiangnan area was lined with shops and goods were frequently traded. At that time, in Suzhou Prefecture, Wan Fu Ji's shortbread was a well-known flavor snack, and there was an endless stream of customers queuing at the door every day, and the store was still in short supply at full capacity. Not only that, but there are often government and large households who place large orders, which is enough for Wanfuji to be busy for a few days, and the store business will naturally not be able to take care of it. Of course, the rich and powerful bigwigs can't afford to offend, but individual customers can't be snubbed at will. In order to prevent individual customers from running empty again, the shopkeeper Shen Hongchang was in a hurry, and after collecting the deposit, he made a white slip and promised to deliver the goods on the specified day.

Originally, this was just an expedient measure to deal with individual customers, although Wanfu Ji did not have this production capacity, but for the sake of the store's signature and reputation, Shen Hongchang had to bite the bullet. After a month of trembling, Shen Hongchang was surprised to find that the situation was not as bad as he imagined, there were only a few individual customers who came to carry shortbread with white strips every day, and the shortbread sold in the store was not much more than before, but there were a lot more copper coins returned every day.

The careful Shen Hongchang inquired in many ways, only to know that a considerable number of customers bought shortbread, not for their own consumption, but as gifts for relatives and friends, and the recipients of gifts may not eat themselves, often find an opportunity to transfer them after a while. But the problem is that the shortbread will become moldy and spoiled after being stored for a long time, and it is impossible to give it away. In addition, carrying a huge box of bread to someone else's house is both inconvenient and eye-catching. As a result, many people bought this kind of white strip and put it at home, and when they wanted to eat it, they would go to Wanfu Ji to exchange it for ready-made, and if they wanted to give it away, they could continue to keep it.

Shen Hongchang secretly pondered, it takes time, manpower and capital to make a box of shortbread, and he can only receive 20 yuan when he sells it. Soon, Wan Fu Ji began to print cake coupons stamped with Shen Hongchang's private seal and sold them in the storefront. The benefits of selling cake coupons are indeed very attractive, the shortbread has not yet been baked, and the account can be collected in advance, and Shen Hongchang no longer has to worry about asking for credit as before. The copper coins from the sale of cake coupons can be used for other sales, and there is no need to pay interest. Some of the cake coupons in the hands of customers will always be lost or damaged, and these shortbreads that cannot be redeemed will be earned in vain. The shopkeepers of the cloth villages, butcher shops, and rice shops in Suzhou City were all red-eyed, and they followed the imitation in a swarm, selling cloth coupons, meat coupons, and rice coupons......

The face value of the cake coupon is not indicated on it, and the price is paid according to the current price when purchasing, and there is no need to refund the difference when picking up the goods. A box of shortbread in a normal year sells for 20 yuan, but in a good year it can only be sold for 15 yuan, but it can be sold for 50 yuan in a famine year. Some shrewd people kept cake coupons at home and sold them when the price of shortbread rose, and the impatient people disdained this practice of waiting for the rabbit, and they started the business of buying and selling short by gambling on the next year's harvest. If the coming year is a good year, the price of the cake will fall. If the coming year is a famine, the price of the cake coupon will increase now. Not only cake coupons, but other coupons on the market have also been speculated. Seeing that the pawnshop and the ticket number were profitable, they not only relied on their own abundant capital to get a piece of the pie and easily manipulated the price, but also accepted the mortgage of various coupons from the people and put up the profits.

If it continues to develop, it may become a securities market and a futures market of a certain size. However, history does not allow assumptions, and the Jiajing period was also an era when the Japanese invaders endangered Jiangsu and Zhejiang very heavily. In the 33rd and 34th years of Jiajing, the Japanese invaded Suzhou Mansion three times in succession. For a time, the prices in Suzhou soared, people were panicked, merchants took the opportunity to hoard Juqi, and the coupons on the market were frantically snapped up by the people. Without waiting for the Japanese to attack the city, he was in chaos first, and Ren Huan, the prefect of Suzhou, made up his mind to rule the city with an iron fist, forcing the price to be stabilized and the grain was opened. The market supply gradually stabilized, and the price of the voucher plummeted. The coupons are worthless, and if the debtors return the profits, it will not be cost-effective to redeem the coupons, so they will rely on their accounts one after another. The pawnshop and the coupons in the ticket number are losing money every day, and the guys are anxiously coming to the door to ask for money. But the debtor said that the money was used to buy things before, but now that the price is cheap, we have no money in hand, or we will leave those coupons to you. The pawnshop and the ticket number did not dare to keep this hot potato, so they hurriedly found the store that issued the coupon and asked them to redeem it at the original price. Of course, the shopkeepers did not agree, and the pawnshop and ticket number were ruthless and sold to the people at a low price. Fearing that prices would rise again, people flocked to the shops to demand exchange. How can there be so many goods in the shop? The debt-ridden shopkeeper hurriedly closed his door, the angry people smashed the shop, and five or six out of ten shops closed down in Suzhou. Ren Huan had never seen such a scene, so he had to resort to tough measures: order all shops to collect coupons within a time limit, return the closed shops to the government, and kill a few mobs who provoked trouble......

The Ming Dynasty was a dynasty that valued agriculture and suppressed commerce, and the scholars who regarded themselves as high in the Qing Dynasty looked down on doing business, and the scale and impact of this "financial crisis" were not large, so the official history actually omitted this history. Although there are several miscellaneous books written by frustrated literati who mention this matter, it is a pity that no one has delved into the mystery.

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