86_86695 Dong Tankou is the town of Dong under Zhijiang City in later generations. In later generations, it was just an ordinary township in China, but Dongshi Town inherited the customs and blood from the Ming and Qing dynasties, and it was also a township full of all kinds of small businesses.

In the era of the late Ming Dynasty, Dongtan slogan said that "half of the city is in Yicheng, merchants gather", and it is also a military location, a religious holy place, and an economic hub. There are more than 300 local brands and 1,000 donkeys carrying goods on the streets, with an annual turnover of about 30 million yuan. Logistics is thriving, commercial land and water transportation is well developed, and handicraft workshops are also very prosperous.

The main industries of Dongtankou include grain processing, whole rice, oil extraction, bean crisp, and sauce garden; Cotton processing includes ginning, elastic flower, spinning, weaving, kicking and dyeing, etc.; Metal products are processed with gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, and white iron (white iron) casting. There are also the production of straw weaving, incense burner, square bucket paper, brown hemp rope, etc., as many as 50 kinds of industries, hundreds of products.

One afternoon in the winter of the forty-seventh year of Wanli, Wang Shuhui and his entourage took a carriage and went all the way west from Zhijiang County, and arrived at Dongtankou in more than an hour. Liu Huaiji said that Dongtankou is the most prosperous place in Zhijiang County. There is no problem at all, even if a trade bazaar of this scale is nothing in Wang Shuhui's eyes, but Dong Tankou is also the first prosperous and busy place he saw in the late Ming Dynasty.

On the way to Dongtankou, you can see teams of donkeys, carrying all kinds of goods on the road. When you arrive near Dongtankou, there is the vast Yangtze River on one side and a busy and thriving market town on the other. Wang Shuhui looked at the scene in front of him and felt that this was what ancient society should look like.

Like an ancient market town with no functional planning, Dongtankou is in a state of disorderly hecticism. The narrow streets of the market town are full of people. The street itself is very narrow, and it is not as wide as Wang Shuhui's carriage. In this case, Wang Shuhui could only leave three second-class family members to take care of the carriage outside the market town, and Wang Shuhui and Zhu Weiyan walked in with three children and two family members under the guidance of Liu Huaiji.

The buildings here in Dongtankou are the same as those of the southern ancient towns that Wang Shuhui had seen before. The white walls and gray tiles are quite high, but there are not many two-story buildings. Each merchant has a different attitude towards the brand of their store, and those who pay attention to the face will use a wooden painted plaque to indicate the font size. Some small businesses just use a cloth sail to write their names. The scale of the shop pù here is generally small, and in front of it is the façade of wholesale and retail of various goods, where the shopkeeper and his associates receive customers. Walking down the street, you can hear the noise of people in the yard behind some shops, and it is obvious that production is going on.

Large customers generally have a fixed purchase target, and they will send the team responsible for transportation directly to the backyard of the merchant. Like Wang Shuhui, who walked on the street, except for those foreign merchants who came to buy goods for the first time and checked the goods of various merchants, they were some ordinary city residents who came to buy daily necessities.

The market town of Dongtankou should be relatively large in the Ming Dynasty, with a total of four streets of two or three hundred meters in two horizontal and two vertical. Liu Huaiyi did not lead them around, but led Wang Shuhui to his original boss's house, a warehouse called Xiangtai.

The scale of Xiangtai warehouse is relatively large in Dongtankou. The store looks the size of three doors and has two floors. With a big yard. The first floor of the warehouse is actually a restaurant, with seven or eight tables and stools next to them. Directly in front of the door, there is a large counter. It's not time to eat, and the first floor is quite deserted, with only two guys cleaning.

Liu Huaiji entered the warehouse and said to a young man who was sweeping the floor, "Little monkey, where are you, it's your turn in the front yard today." The young man looked up and found that it was Liu Huaiji talking, with a happy smile on his face, "Why did Shopkeeper Liu come, didn't you go back to the palace to enjoy the blessings, why did you come back again." It must be that the prince knows that you are an old cat who loves to steal his mouth and drove you out, isn't it? ”

Liu Huaiji didn't care either, and said to the young man with a smile, "You dog knows how to chew your tongue, hurry up and go to the backyard to call the owner out, the guest of honor and the county lord of our palace are here, let him come out quickly to meet him." He said to another fellow who was standing next to him, smiling and listening to them, "Second donkey, you don't have a look at this dog, hurry up and take out the best tea leaves in the store and brew them, be quick, be careful that the county lord and the guest of honor ask you for your sin." ”

Liu Huaiji entered the warehouse, and the whole person seemed to come alive all of a sudden. As if he had returned to his own home, after giving a command, he invited Wang Shuhui and Zhu Weiyan to sit down, stood aside and whispered, "Yibin doesn't know, in the past, because of the poverty of his family, he had to be taken care of by the owner of this store. The old slave used to send some food and food to the prince and the county lord, which was also received by the owner of the family. Speaking of which, this proprietor has some kindness to our palace. ”

Zhu Weiyan heard this and said to Liu Huaiji, "The fourth uncle is also true, and such a thing will not be made clear in advance." Since this owner is kind to our house, we should thank him well, and take two horses of Shu brocade just bought for a while, and give them to others as a thank you gift. ”

After saying this, she turned her head again, and said to Wang Shuhui with a shy smile on her face, "Brother Shi sees if I can arrange it like this." Wang Shuhui didn't care about this, he said to Zhu Weiyan casually, "I often hear people say that I don't know anything about these etiquette things outside the male protagonist and inside the female protagonist." In the future, Wen'er will be in charge, and you don't have to discuss it with me. In fact, the materials, silver, and equipment that Wang Shuhui brought back from modern times were all controlled by Zhu Weiyan, and Wang Shuhui didn't care about some details at all.

He said to Liu Huaiji, "The fourth uncle brought us here, is there anything else besides thanking the owner of this family?" ”

Liu Huaiji hurriedly replied, "Back to Yibin, the owner of this family is named Sima Feng, and he was originally a minor official in the Yamen. Later, he resigned from the mission and ran a warehouse in Dongtankou, and became the richest man in Zhijiang County for decades. Half of the street in this Dongtankou is the property under his name. If Yibin wants to understand the market here, this Sima Dongjia is the best candidate. ”

Sima Feng had originally read for a few years, but he also knew that he was not a material for reading, so he became an elder brother who posted books in the household, entered the yamen, and made a paperwork. Later, I didn't know what was going on, and offended the master of the previous magistrate, and I couldn't survive in the yamen, so I ran to Dongtankou outside the city to make a living.

With the contacts accumulated at the yamen and the family background, Sima Feng has gone from an ordinary account office to a wealthy businessman with three large river boats under his name, half a street in Dongtankou, and a wealthy merchant who operates a warehouse, a restaurant, a weaving workshop, and a dyeing workshop. In today's words, he is a big entrepreneur whose business field spans the logistics industry, the catering industry, and the manufacturing industry.

Sima Feng, who was originally born as a small official, is the most deaf and clear-sighted. He had long heard that the Zhijiang Wang family, who lived in the countryside outside Dongcheng, had been moving a lot recently. It is to recruit people and build houses, and to buy land and land. At noon, he got news from the county office, saying that it seemed that the title of the Zhijiang royal family was coming back.

In the eyes of the late Ming Dynasty, Sima Feng's background was not very good. Although in the eyes of ordinary people, he is the richest man in Zhijiang, and there are five people and six people who are enviable. But he himself knew that he was born in a small official's family and had been a small official, so he really had to be counted according to the etiquette of the Ming Dynasty, but he was the same inferior status as a criminal prisoner and prostitute. A master of the seven-grade county order can almost kill him, not to mention those real scholars and those officials who are scholars.

Sima Feng, who has read history books and is proficient in calculations, has an ideal in his heart that no one knows, that is, to be a businessman like Lü Buwei who can hoard strange goods and run the world. This is the reason why he was in charge of the Yamen, married the daughter of the patrol in charge of the local armed forces, and made friends with the mountain bandits and road tyrants near the Zhijiang River, and the boat gangsters on the Yangtze River.

Speaking of which, the reason why he was well-informed and hired his brother-in-law, Sima Feng, who was a well-known talent as a dog-headed military advisor, treated Liu Huaiji well, and helped Zhu Youzi's family with the help of Liu Huaiji, was that he felt that Zhu Youzi's title of King Zhijiang would definitely be restored in the future.

Therefore, as soon as he heard that Liu Huaiji had led the county lord and the guest of honor to come to him, Sima Feng rushed out in a hurry.

Sima Feng's appearance, to be honest, looks quite dignified. Wang Shuhui carefully observed Sima Feng, who had finished his salute and straightened his waist. He has an angular square face, not the kind of ancient rich businessman who Wang Shuhui imagined, he is about 1.7 meters tall, which is very tall in this era.

Sima Feng was dressed in silk clothes and looked like a homely outsider. But with the protruding green tendons on his hands, the strong muscles on his body, and a pair of bright eyes with fine connotations, he does not look like a pampered rich man in ancient society at all, but like a small entrepreneur in the entrepreneurial stage of modern society.

Wang Shuhui nodded in his heart, he likes to deal with this kind of person very much, as the saying goes, it is better to fight with people who understand than to say a word to people who are confused. He is not afraid of others being shrewd, but he is afraid that others will be confused. Because people who are confused will always be confused, how can you reason with that kind of person and lay out the facts, you can't talk to each other, and there is no way to communicate effectively. And those shrewd people are good at calculation, which makes wooden people like Wang Shuhui feel a headache, but as long as the benefit distribution is divided with them, then the communication and cooperation with them can be efficient, time-saving, and high success rate.

Wang Shuhui didn't wait for others to say anything, and asked directly, "Mr. Sima thinks that the sale of private salt is good or not." ”

Hearing this, Zhu Weiyan and Liu Huaiji next to her, including Sima Feng, the object of the questioning, all fell into shock all of a sudden, and no one was speechless