The New Year festival is approaching, and the people in the township are gradually ending the busy year and beginning to prepare for the festival.

For most people, it is already lucky to be able to live another year in peace, and it is already quite a rare enjoyment to be busy near the end of the year, sleep a little more in the morning, and eat a few more bites of dinner, but they really do not have the energy and financial resources to deliberately prepare for the festival.

But there is one place that is an exception, that is, Shangyuan, which is located on the east bank of Luoshui and belongs to Wuxiang County.

Today's Shangyuan is a well-known rich township, and when it comes to prosperity, it is not much better than Huazhou.

Even the most inconspicuous houses in the township are large brick houses with three bays, and one or two chambers are added on either side, one of which must be the housewife's weaving room, and the other is either to store chariots and horses, or to place farm tools.

As for the more spacious mansions, they will enter two or three before and after, and the halls will be accumulated, and the family of more than a dozen people will still be rich, and there will be a few male and female slaves who are still in the house.

The living environment in the township is already so magnificent, and the supply of various people's biological resources is even more abundant and surplus. Shangyuan Dashi provides all the seasonal goods from the south and the north of the sky, with a wide variety and dazzling. Not only did it meet the various needs of the people of Shangyuan, but even in the state city, Chang'an and even further places, there was no shortage of merchants who came here to buy goods.

The people of Shangyuan also had a variety of ways to make a living, and the men and women in the prime of life either worked in various workshops, or farmed and weaved at home.

No matter what kind of livelihood they make, the income of a husband and wife for a year is enough to maintain the family's life and rent and there is still a surplus, and the male and female Ding Yong who work in the workshop are also handed over by the workshop owner to the Qu League, and the Qu League is responsible for renting the soldiers.

Li Xiaoce rode his horse on the neat gravel road in the township, his eyes frequently looked to the sides, and the surprise on his face could not be concealed at all: "In the early years, I only heard that Guanzhong was narrow and the people were poor and had a difficult livelihood, but I didn't expect it to be so rich and beautiful when I really entered this township. Hebei used to be rich, but it is not as far as this township in comparison!"

Wu Jingyi, who insisted on leading the horse for Li Xiao, heard Li Xiao's emotion, so he looked back and said with a smile: "The old news of Ming Gong is not false, Shangyuan was indeed a narrow and poor land before, and his livelihood was not prosperous. But after Lang Jun settled in the village, everything was different......

When it comes to the changes and gains brought by Li Lang to Shangyuan, any Shangyuan people can talk endlessly, no matter how much they say, there is only one meaning to sum up, that is, without Li Lang, there will never be today's Shangyuan!

Therefore, not long after Li Tai and his father returned to Huazhou, the villagers repeatedly urged Wu Jingyi and other former relatives who stayed in the hometown to invite Li Tai and his father back to the township as soon as possible.

What Li Xiao saw before was only the warm welcome of the people in Kansai to his son on the occasion of human affection, and today when he entered the township, he really saw the various contributions made by Li Tai in the township, and he was also overjoyed, looking at Li Tai and saying with emotion: "I heard my son's wild words before, and I am still a little uneasy. But now that I see how much the countryside has accumulated, what else is there to worry about?"

In order to avoid unnecessary riots, Li Tai deliberately told Li Zhusheng not to make any too grand welcome ceremony. The villagers wanted to come to congratulate his father and son on the reunion, so they set up a flowing water seat on his family village, and they could just enter the village to drink a cup.

After leading his father to enjoy Shangyuan, Li Tai and his entourage returned to Zhuangshang. At this time, there were already a large number of people in the manor, and the county commander Zheng Man took the county officials to personally preside over the situation here.

"What's going on?"

Li Tai saw a large number of dried dried mountain delicacies and other ingredients piled up on one side of the village, so he asked.

Li Zhusheng, who returned to the village first, walked up and explained with a wry smile: "All of them are gifts from the villagers, and I have persuaded them many times, but I can't help it."

Li Tai knew that although the living standards of the villagers had improved greatly, they were only food and clothing, and these mountain delicacies were nothing to him, but they could be put in each villager's house to rectify a rare meal, so he planned to distribute them back.

At this time, Party Chief Zhao drove an ox cart again, and the cart was also full of dry goods.

After stopping the car, Party Leader Zhao got out of the car and said with a smile: "Although the people are clumsy, they are affectionate, and they learned that Lang Jun finally visited

When Zun Weng returned, he was very happy for Lang Jun in his heart, but he was afraid that Ming Gong was not suitable for the countryside here, so they prepared their own hometown flavors to send them, and hundreds of flavors were expected to be able to make Ming Gong appreciate and cherish them, and he would love this hometown from then on!"

Hearing what Party Chief Zhao said, Li Tai also laughed, and even when it was announced that the flowing water seat in the village would last from today until the seventh day of the first month of the first month of the next year, during which the villagers could enter the village to eat.

After hearing this, the villagers in Zhuangzhong also high-fived and thanked them, and some even sang and danced.

The feast in the village was carried out quickly, and Li Tai saw that his father was also infected by this atmosphere, and his face was full of smiles, which was far more relaxed and comfortable than when he had feasted with the people in Huazhou City earlier, so he also introduced these villagers to his father, and asked some interesting things about the township by the way.

Li Tai accompanied his father to the banquet for a while, and then invited Party Chief Zhao and others to continue to accompany him, and he invited Li Zhusheng, Wu Jingyi and other leaders of the Qu League into the village to discuss matters. After Zheng Man was promoted to the county magistrate, although he no longer served as the head of the Qu League, he was still very concerned about the affairs of the Qu League, so he also joined the council to discuss the matter.

Today's Qu League is no longer limited to the river, canal, Jin Bridge and other things, but a comprehensive civil league covering several states in the left and near the state.

Although the construction and maintenance of civil canals, weirs and other fortifications are still its main business, the side business has also penetrated into all aspects, the most important of which is lending.

Qumeng lending is divided into two forms, namely sericulture, silk and linen looms and other businesses for ordinary households, and loans for various workshop owners. The former provides raw materials and tools for production, re-exported silk cloth and other items, while the latter provides a series of support such as cash, technology and marketing, and can even be exempted from interest as long as it can meet the production scale and product standards required by Qumeng.

Li Tai did not operate the Qumeng as a profit-making organization, but as a platform for integrating the local resources of the Kansai region, and what he did was to promote the development of productive forces.

Now the number of looms registered in the Qu League has reached more than 50,000, and a loom returns 100 horses a year, which is the cash flow of more than 5 million pieces of silk every year, although seventy percent of them are to be returned to the weavers in the form of goods, but there are also more than 1.5 million pieces of silk gross profit, Gao Aocao is becoming less and less valuable in his place.

However, the management cost and upfront investment of so many weavers are also very high, and the depreciation will increase when the scale increases, and the profits that really fall into the hands of Qumeng are not so much. The most important thing for this business is to provide a large amount of cash flow to Qumeng every year, which can be developed in other industries.

At the beginning, there were not many workshops supported and invested by Qumeng, but only a few families in Shangyuan and the surrounding area wanted to test the water, and they took over some upstream processing that Li Tai had ceded out without losing money.

After all, the concept of the flow of time is still based on farming and weaving, industry and commerce as the end, and thousands of floating wealth are not as good as Botian Sanqing. But who would make a hard-working and decent person go into debt? If there is another famine, the products in the workshop will not be enough food and clothing.

However, Kansai was a few years old, and trade in Shangyuan and other places became more and more prosperous, and there were more and more goods on the market, and the self-sufficient manor economy was becoming more and more cost-effective.

There are even some small civilian households only rely on a few looms to weave diligently, a year down to food and clothing, to the second year to take a bold shot, loan to set up a workshop, site, technology, labor and a series of rely on the supply of the canal alliance, half a year back to the cost of half a year to see profits, accounting income is more than the income of several acres of fertile land!

Last year was a year of blowout in the number of Qu Meng's workshops, just the workshop for firing bricks and pottery, Qu Meng invested dozens of them in one fell swoop, and the people of Shangyuan could afford to build brick and tile houses, and a considerable part of them were also because of this.

As for other kinds of handicraft workshops, they are also very prosperous, oil extraction, papermaking, ink making, etc., basically Li Tai's own manor industry will gradually hand over all processes to other workshops cultivated by Qumeng for production after the technology is matured, so as to increase production capacity and get more products.

Nowadays, Li Tai's own estate is no longer engaged in the production of various daily necessities, and even the original core industries of soap and flavor have been gradually released to the outside and a complete production supply chain has been established. Li Tai's own manor is still retained, and only the two cores of military industry and scientific research remain.

Of course, too

Not all the technology Li Tai has selflessly shared, such as the water conservancy spinning wheel, he has never leaked it to the outside world, and now even the erection along the Luoshui coast has been demolished.

Although this tool is amazingly efficient, it is not suitable for use in areas where water resources and environments are relatively fragile. Once it spreads, it is foreseeable that the powerful people in various places will compete to barrage the river and set up weirs, and Li Tai can find goods everywhere to meet the needs of some of the people of Shangyuan who have changed from agriculture to work, but if the whole Guanzhong really wants to play like this, then the fun will be great.

Therefore, one of the cores of Li Tai's discussion today when Li Tai convened the Qu League was to go south and transfer the funds from Guanzhong to Chubei and Jianghan, where both geographical resources and development prospects were better than those of Guanzhong today.

The leaders of the Qu League have been accustomed to following Li Tai's instructions in the general direction for several years, and it is also a fact that the Qu League is thriving, although they have not even been to the north, but when Li Tai proposed the plan to go south to Wuguan, they still nodded and agreed, and each said that they would start preparations next.

Zheng Man, who was also full of confidence in Li Tai, looked at Li Tai pitifully and said, "In the old years, a certain person entered this township with Lang Jun, and the scenery in the township gradually improved, but I didn't see Lang Jun, which was really miserable. Lang Jun will return to the town next year, can he take it with him?"