The decrease in the supply of goods in the market is accompanied by a decrease in the supply of goods, which is a situation that is known to anyone with some basic economic knowledge or some practical experience in business. The direct result of the decrease in money and the decrease in commodity industry is the soaring price of goods.

In the environment of the Ming Dynasty, under the limitation of the level of productivity of feudal society, the total amount of grain production has been in an unstable situation. However, the instability of food production in this kind of food production was really not too much of a problem for the feudal ruling class of the Ming Dynasty.

It is true that the Jianghan Plain and the Dongting Lake Plain in the Huguang area were the commercial grain production bases of the Ming Dynasty, but the Ming Dynasty was not the only one in the Huguang region that produced grain. The significance of the existence of commercial grain is because of its commodity, but the landlords and bureaucrats of the Ming Dynasty had a large amount of land themselves, and they could produce a large amount of grain on their own land.

The harm caused by the skyrocketing food prices is purely aimed at the middle and lower classes. That is, it is only harmful to ordinary people.

For those big landlords and big bureaucrats, not only is the rise in grain prices harmless to them, but they are also very happy to see this happen. After all, as landlords and bureaucrats who control a lot of land, the rise in grain prices can make them directly benefit from the increase in grain prices.

100 yuan a pound of grain, modern people can't afford to eat. 100 copper coins a pound of grain, the ancient people could not afford to eat. Even in the economically developed Jiangnan region, a hired worker can earn a maximum of 30 to 40 copper coins for a day's work in a textile workshop that concentrates on large-scale production. In other words, ordinary people can only buy half a catty of food for a day's work.

If you are a human being, you have to eat, and if you don't eat, you have to starve to death. 100 yuan a pound of grain is not affordable for the common people, not to mention, it may not be sold every day. Under such circumstances, the desperate people have no other way to think of than to rebel and make trouble.

Therefore, since 1625, the uprisings and other events that have been in the north and south of the Ming Dynasty have become more and more fierce and violent.

According to the statistics of the Baath Party in early 1626, in the second half of 1625 alone, the Baath Party absorbed more than 70,000 displaced people and refugees from Suzhou alone. Thirty percent of them were urban commoners, and 70 percent were bankrupt peasants.

In general, by 1625, not only were the peasants living in the countryside bankrupt due to land annexation, but also the urban commoners living in the cities were despered.

In the second half of 1625 alone, Suzhou, which had the most developed textile industry in the Ming Dynasty with a population of more than 1.5 million, had more than 20 starvation riots. Almost all riots were caused by the looting of grain stores by urban civilians.

This is the case in the Jiangnan region, which is less affected by the climate of the Xiaoice River, so you can imagine what the situation will be in the northern areas that are seriously affected by the climate of the Xiaoice River.

In January 1627, a small steamship of about 200 tons sailed into the Wuchangfu wharf on the busy Wuchangfu wharf.

Because there are so many ships on the dock, this small steamer has to wait in the berthing area for a while, waiting for the Wuchang Port Authority's working boat to tow it.

Because the wait was a little too long, a young man dressed in Confucian clothes came out of the cabin. Because he had just studied the steam engine at the stern for a while, there were several obvious soot marks on the young man's body.

This young man has a beard, so it is really difficult to say how old he is if this is to be seen by modern people. However, looking at his straight back and clear eyes, this person should not be more than thirty years old.

Seeing the figure of this young man, the captain, who was at the helm in the shed in the middle and rear of the deck, immediately handed over the rudder to his assistant, who was standing next to him. He himself trotted all the way to the young man's side, and called out "Third Master" in a proper manner.

This young man with a big beard and soot marks on his body is named Zhu Zhiyu.

Zhu Zhiyu was originally studying in Nanjing with his elder brother Zhu Qiming, who was the commander of the Nanjing Shenwu Battalion. Recently, Zhu Zhiyu has been reading very depressed, and suddenly moved the idea of wanting to visit the mountains and rivers and study places.

How chaotic the current Ming Dynasty is, Zhu Zhiyu, a scholar, doesn't know, but his brother, who was born as a martial artist and has been in the military camp for several years, can't not know. Originally, Zhu Qiming did not agree with his younger brother's idea of traveling, but his younger brother, who was a little stupid, was not a very persuasive person, so at the suggestion of a housekeeper, he asked his younger brother to take the merchant ship that went to Wuchang to load goods at home to Wuchang Mansion.

Speaking of the name Zhu Zhiyu, most people may not know much about it. But if the name of Zhu Shunshui is mentioned, most people who know more about the history of the late Ming Dynasty will know it. Zhu Shunshui, who organized the anti-Qing armed struggle after the death of the Ming Dynasty and went into exile in Japan after the defeat, was called one of the five great Chinese scholars in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties along with Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi, Gu Yanwu, and Yan Yuan in later generations.

Of course, the current Zhu Zhiyu is not the Zhu Shunshui who was forced into exile after losing his country and family. He is just an ordinary scholar who is still practicing hard for the Eight Strands and One Heart Imperial Examination. However, like most of the scholars in the Jiangnan area of this era, Zhu Shunshui, who emphasized pragmatism in his thinking, did not have any psychological aversion or resistance to the cross-era production tools and industrial products that the Baath Party vigorously promoted.

Zhu Zhiyu studied in Nanjing for two years, most of which was spent in the Songjiang Prefecture area with teachers. In the Songjiang area, the popularity of steam engines produced by the Baath Party in the textile industry was very good. It's just that because these machines are all in the textile factory, and there are many female workers in the textile factory, Zhu Zhiyu has lived in Songjiang for about a year, but he still only knows about the steam engine.

Because of the relatively prosperous commodity economy, the Chinese in the late Ming Dynasty, from top to bottom, from readers to ordinary people, were generally more open-minded. In particular, the scholars in the Jiangnan area are not at all averse to advanced scientific knowledge and specific equipment and technology. Western missionaries who spread Christianity in China in the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty even needed to attract scholars with advanced knowledge of physics and chemistry as a stepping stone for them to spread religion.

In this regard, the people of the Ming Dynasty did much better than the people of the Qing Dynasty.

Born into a family of feudal bureaucrats, Zhu Zhiyu was influenced by the mercantilism of the Jiangnan region and supported all technologies that could promote production. Therefore, with the opportunity to get close to the steam engine, Zhu Zhiyu will not let it go.

Because the Zhu family, a small cargo ship purchased from Wuchang Shipyard, needed to fill the boiler with coal all the time during the journey, Zhu Zhiyu still had the opportunity to observe the steam engine after the ship arrived at the berthing area and the boiler was turned off. Space-Time Gate 1619

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Chapter 296 Zhu Shunshui visits Wuchang 1