Chapter 188 Customs

As mentioned last time, the commander of Zhangling County tried his best to scavenge the people's fat and ointment on his one-third of an acre of land, and he was not satisfied with the output of the land, so he hit the idea on the merchants.

It's a pity that Zhangling County is not on the normal trade route, and most of the merchants take the line of Xiangyang, where there are official roads and big roads, and they are safer along the line.

In the past, few merchants will take the first line of Zhangling County, this line does not have a big road to Wu and Shu, or the route is not right, you need to go here to pass some winding mountain sheep intestine trails, both rugged and dangerous, who wants to go to the general business?

This also made it difficult to figure out the normal trade of guò and collect taxes. Speaking of which, perhaps everyone has already thought, if there is no normal trade, is there still abnormal trade?

It is true that most of those who abandon the official road and take these rugged mountain roads are engaged in illegal business, that is, smuggling.

Therefore, in the past, the line of Zhangling County was an important passage for smuggling from Wei to Wu and Shu. It was from this smuggling route that E Huan sneaked to Zhangling City at that time.

Those who are engaged in illegal trade will naturally check the Yamen of Zhangling County up and down in order to find a protective umbrella to protect them from the rain. And the Zhangling County Order was in a hurry to make money, so the two sides hit it off, smelling like each other, one side offered bribes to seek protection and convenience, and the other side turned a blind eye after asking for bribes.

This is the simplest form of collusion between officials and businessmen, and of course, the yamen of Zhangling County can also be regarded as a triad, and they will not make trouble for those smugglers after collecting protection money.

Given that they will also provide some conveniences, they can also be regarded as service industries, or service-oriented governments, where they collect money, provide services, smugglers pay for services, and mutual benefit and contribute to GDP, so why not?

Serving the smuggling industry was an important source of income for Zhangling County before, but recently, this kind of "service industry" in Zhangling County ushered in the spring and came to a blowout development. In this case, the Zhangling County Commander should be grateful to Liu Hou, because the reason for the surge in his business was that there was a war going on in Xiangyang.

Due to Liu Hou's second expedition to the north of Xiangyang, this regular trade route was cut off, and those caravans had no choice but to abandon the wide and easy-to-follow official road and take the rugged mountain road on the side of Zhangling.

The number of these caravans doing legitimate business is much more than that of illegal business, and the order of Zhangling County was overjoyed to see that a large number of caravans poured into the territory, so he sent people to set up checkpoints on the road to collect taxes on the passing merchants, which is the customs customs, and the customs of later generations have the same effect.

At the same time, he also opened several inns, carriage and horse shops, green houses, gambling halls and other service shops in the city, as if he was vigorously developing the tertiary industry.

If Liu Hou sees what he has done, he will definitely be amazed and praised him as a pioneer of reform and opening up and a trendsetter in economic development.

Those past merchants are not short of money but the journey is boring, and they will not let go of the opportunity to relax and relax, so these services provided by Zhangling County Order have a good business for a while.

Zhangling County Ling has been making money lately, and he really counts the money every day until he has cramps. The order of Zhangling County, which has made money in a good way, directly doubled the GDP of Zhangling County several times, and achieved the goal of doubling the GDP within a few years put forward by the reform and development of later generations in just one month.

These days, the financial revenue of a county in Zhangling County has caught up with that of a county. Of course, most of the benefits of GDP go into the pockets of Zhangling County, and the benefits that ordinary people can enjoy are very limited.

After the special forces and Sima Yi's family arrived at the tax customs in Zhangling County, they paid a lot of taxes, and the people of Longxingxing checked up and down in advance, and successfully turned a blind eye to those officials.

Why should the officials who guard the checkpoint turn a blind eye? Because they don't look like serious business.

Their carriages were so tightly covered by curtains that it was impossible to see what was inside. They would even rather pay a large tax than have the servants get on the bus to inspect the goods inside.

This suspicious move is a good indication that they are smuggling something shady and shady. However, the officials have long been familiar with this kind of thing. Before the war in Xiangyang, there were many such sneaky and mysterious things.

The most common scenario is this: when the officials are about to inspect the goods of a problematic caravan, a person who looks like a steward will come out and stuff the officials with an ingot of white flower pattern silver. So, these officials understood, said something that was not salty or light, and waved their hands to let them go.

This time was no exception, and when the official said that he would open the curtain on the carriage to inspect the "goods" inside, a strong man came and stuffed each of them with a silver ingot weighing ten taels. At this time, the officials all knew that the "goods" on the carriage must be not trivial.

How much silver is ten taels? It's almost a year's worth of wages for these servants. They usually pay copper coins, and this white flower pattern is very rare. These people are so generous, if they are not smuggling something of high value, how can they give up this capital?

They know that they can't make all the profits, they must always make a little money for others, otherwise, why should people take this road if they are not profitable, you must know that there is more than one smuggling channel like Zhangling County.

They also know that some money should not be earned by them, and some goods should not be touched by them, and if they make or touch it, it will not only make them lose customers in the future, but may even bring disaster to them, because first of all, these smugglers are outlaws, forcing them to dare to do anything.

Secondly, those who do this will be sent to the county order. If they don't open their eyes and break the rules, they have a way to rectify themselves, and they won't even help them with the county order when the time comes.

So, after receiving the benefits, the officials waved their hands as usual, and they wanted to let them pass the guò level. However, at this time, I suddenly heard an immature children's voice coming out of a carriage: "Help, we are Sima Dadudu's family, we have been kidnapped, save ......" As soon as he said this, he heard a "crackling" sound, and the child's voice stopped abruptly, apparently the shouting person was knocked unconscious.

The person who shouted was Sima Zhao, who would later become the male pig's foot in the idiom story of "Sima Zhao's heart". This future giant is now just a little kid who can be rubbed by others, giving people a hand knife and lightly knocking on the back of the head and fainting.

ps. Hurry up early this morning to make up for yesterday's, so as to save someone scolding me for being broken, in fact, I only broke this time this month, which is not excessive, right?

Thank you to all the friends who support me, especially the wind phantom lizard, longtu168168, production captain 121, little purple elf, boring person 761, etc., not to list them all, they voted for me a lot of monthly votes, I have never asked for any votes, whether it is a monthly ticket or a red ticket, because I feel that I have now been reduced to the 2k party, and I really don't have the face to ask for votes. But I was very touched by the fact that they were still very supportive. I was surprised to find out that I had 30 monthly passes this month, and I was ranked 12th on the list of historical monthly passes, which is really a happy thing. I have always adhered to the principle of "because it is not disputed, so it cannot be contested", and rarely ask for votes and rankings, and this time is no exception, I continue not to ask for a monthly pass, nor do I say that I want to hit the top ten of the monthly ticket list. But I still have to thank my friends for their kindness, or how ruthless I am, my knife is ruthless, but my people have a lot of affection. Thank you!