At the beginning of the Great Qin, due to the strict laws and frequent wars, the prostitution industry was not developed.

But in this period, Daqin continued to develop abroad, the country seemed to be increasingly prosperous, the material life was abundant, and people naturally began to advocate extravagance after being warm, and the technology industry began to wake up.

The banks of the Qinhuai River, which had been filled with the sound of glamour in the pre-Ming Dynasty, prospered again after experiencing the depression of the Qing Dynasty and the world.

As early as the Wanli period of the pre-Ming Dynasty, in the Yangzhou area, there were a large number of young women who had undergone special training and were ready to marry wealthy businessmen as concubines, and these women were thin and beautiful, all slender and thin, and graceful, so they were called "Yangzhou Thin Horses".

Yangzhou was the settlement of the salt merchants of the two Huai (Huainan and Huaibei) at that time, the salt merchants were the rich party, and the luxury of life was comparable to that of the royal family, and their wealth also fed a large number of industries that survived on their behalf, "raising thin horses" was one of them, which fully catered to the perverted psychological needs of the salt merchants.

At this time, the name of "thin horse" has revived, and along the Yangtze River, along the Qinhuai River, to all parts of Daqin.

The "thin horse" on the Yanfang on the bank of the Qinhuai River is not only thin enough, its gestures, a smile and a smile, must be charming and moving, to be able to hook the rich businessmen and tycoons are willing to spend a thousand dollars to make him smile, and even, some "thin horses" behave, than the princes, nobles, dignitaries and nobles in the deep boudoir of the lady is more elegant and elegant.

The value of these carefully trained "thin horses" may reach up to 10,000 taels, of course, this is the highest level of "goods", which cannot be kept in captivity by the luxury families of the rich.

Although the body of this "thin horse" is thin and boneless, it is exquisite, and it is white and greasy and smooth as far as the eye can reach. Since childhood, these girls have been taught to play the piano and blow the flute, recite poems and paint, write and play Go, play dominoes, and play backgammon. The girls will also study hard, in order to be favored by some wealthy families, buy themselves out, and continue to live a life of fine clothes and food.

Slightly inferior girls, although they will be slightly inferior in appearance and demeanor, but if they are compared with ordinary women, they are also shy and lovely, gentle and elegant. Some of them are illiterate, and they only work on the skills of ordinary housewives such as female celebrities, tailoring, and cooking, and their target customers are just ordinary businessmen.

These women are also pitiful, not to mention being trained and trained by Ya Po and Lao Bustard since childhood, and in the process of being bought and sold, there is no dignity at all, they are like a well-polished goods, making people bargain and pick up and down.

With Ya Po's shout of "The girl is a visitor", the long-awaited "thin horse" walked out of the veil, and then bowed to the many rich merchants and guests in the hall.

Then he said, "The girl goes up", and she walked up, standing on the steps of Yanfang, and looked at the many buyers in the audience with a shy look.

Then said "the girl turned around", she turned around and stood, and her charming face was revealed in front of everyone from different angles under the light of the lights.

He also said, "The girl borrowed her hand to take a look", and rolled up the cuffs, revealing the delicate skin like balsam white cream.

It was also said that "the girl looks at the princess", and he peeked at it in a blink of an eye, and the water waves flowed, and the Ying Ying was moving.

At this time, the wealthy businessman, who was already anxious, couldn't hold back and asked loudly: "How old is the girl?" ”

"The little girl is fifteen." His answer was like a yellow bird, and it was graceful.

"Twelve hundred!"

"Fifteen hundred!"

"Two thousand!"

“……”

Wealthy merchants began to bid with each other, and the highest bidder was given the example of "skinny horses", and they could be brought home in the Yanfang or directly to enjoy some lovely tenderness.

"Brother Qi, aren't you going to make a move to win this young woman?" Niu Xianting saw Qi Zhenglun's eyes staring directly at the "thin horse" who was about to be sold on the stage, obviously being hooked and losing his soul, and couldn't help but laugh and joke.

"Look, this kind of young lady, the final price will definitely be raised to more than five thousand yuan!" Qi Zhenglun swallowed a mouthful of saliva, and there was a hint of heat in his eyes, "Five thousand yuan, enough for me to make a profit from selling a boatload of grain." ”

Although Qi Zhenglun has a royal surname and is still a descendant of the late King (Qi Dahai), after so many years, he has long been estranged from the royal family and has been reduced to a side branch, almost no different from ordinary people. Just relying on the favor of his ancestors and the relationship between his family, he did grain trade in the territory of the governor of Annam, and transported it to the Jiangnan region of Qin State to earn freight and price differences. Therefore, 5,000 yuan is really a lot of money for him.

"Some small factories in China may not make 5,000 yuan a year." Liang Yifeng nodded and said, "By the way, these Qin businessmen are really fucking rich!" ”

"Salt merchants have been a symbol of the rich on the mainland since ancient times."

"It's really ridiculous, in the Qin State, selling salt can also make a giant businessman. Buy such an expensive skinny horse without blinking an eye. ”

"What's so strange?" Niu Xianting said disdainfully: "The salt industry in Lianghuai is monopolized by just a few people, with the huge population of the Qin State, everyone earns a penny on their heads, and in a year, it is also tens of millions of interest." Well, just like the Indian trading companies and the Bengali trading companies, with their monopoly trade, a few pennies of iron nails in the local area can be sold for a dime or two in India, where the population is also huge, and the huge profit can be made more than ten times. ”

During this period, the Great Qin court, like previous dynasties, classified the production and sale of salt as a monopoly. The country was divided into eleven salt management districts, and the production, transportation, and sale of salt were managed and operated by monopoly merchants granted by the imperial court, who passed the salt tax obtained from the sale to the Great Qin Household Department.

According to rough estimates, nearly 5%-7% of the treasury revenue of Daqin's treasury comes from the salt industry, which surprised many Qi merchants inexplicably.

However, after thinking about it, the price of salt among the people of Daqin, the low ones sell for more than ten wen per catty, and the high ones sell for seventy or eighty wen per catty, which seems to be understandable.

During this period, there were only more than 20 catties of pork, and a stone of rice was only 1 tael of silver (Qin officials minted silver dollars and scattered silver were passed), and the price of salt was relatively high!

Not to mention that in the social background of the underdeveloped economy of Daqin in this era, even in the future generations, the price of one catty of salt is equal to two catties of pork, which is also unacceptable.

The Lianghuai in East China is the largest salt monopoly area, and the salt merchants in Yangzhou City are all prominent and worth tens of thousands, and are the richest merchant groups in Daqin.

The salt merchants in Yangzhou could only transport and sell, not produce and sell, and they had to sell nearly 6 million stone (about 350,000 tons) of salt a year, supplying almost a quarter of the country's population, and making a profit of 2 million to 3 million taels of silver - of course, the money earned still needed to be paid to officials, local forces, and the royal family, but the amount of money that eventually fell into the pockets of many salt merchants was still quite staggering.

Therefore, it is not difficult for salt merchants to buy a "skinny horse" with a high price.

"Why, after the Indian trading company and the Bangladeshi trading company were revoked of their trade exclusivity, Brother Niu also wanted to go there to get involved?" Qi Zhenglun's eyes swept around, watching those rich businessmen continue to raise the quotation upwards with great fanfare, and his face showed a somewhat tangled expression.

"No, no." Niu Xianting shook his head and said: "I have been engaged in fur trade in Qin for more than ten years, and I already have ready-made channels and networks. If you rush to India and are not familiar with the place, you will be pitted by the two local snakes of the Indian trading company and the Bangladesh trading company. ”

"Brother Niu is right." Liang Yifeng said: "I heard that the Directorate General of Taxation is planning to set up an office in India, referring to the tax policy of overseas territories, in addition to indirectly collecting taxes from indigenous Indians, mainly to collect various trade turnover taxes and business taxes. Well, all the trading companies and factories operating in India have to scrape the profits from the government, and they will no longer be able to put all their money into their own pockets as before. In the territory of Qin, we can not only enjoy many preferential trade conditions, import and export profits, but also do not have to pay various commercial taxes to Qin in addition to import tariffs. ”

"Our merchants of Qi can enjoy some preferential trade conditions now, but it may not be the case in the future." Qi Zhenglun said: "According to the news from the Great Qin Dynasty, their cabinet and household department intend to levy commercial taxes on all foreign merchants, and every transaction voucher and contract must be stamped with an official seal at a specific yamen and pay business tax before it can be carried out normally. Otherwise, once the Imperial Court Tax Department finds out that they have traded without official permission, the goods will be confiscated, additional fines will be imposed, and even people will be imprisoned. ”

"Is the news true?" When Liang Yifeng heard this, he was immediately shocked.

"This news came from our Qi legation in Nanjing, and it should be more reliable." Qi Zhenglun said: "Although the Qin court has not yet formally established and promulgated it, it has been discussed and approved by their cabinet, and most of them will introduce this policy next year." If you think about it, the northwest and Mobei regions of the Qin State are inextricably linked, and the supply lines are so far away, and the silver money and materials are not spent like flowing water. A few months ago, several Kalons in Wusizang made trouble again, forcing their snow-capped mountain monks to Qinghai, and the Qin State successively sent two or three thousand people into Tibet to quell the rebellion, which cost a lot of money. And ......"

Qi Zhenglun looked mysterious, moved closer to the two, and said in a low voice: "In the past two or three months, in the Beiming, Dongdan, and Bohai countries, in Liaodong and North Korea, they have made frequent moves and constantly mobilized their troops, presumably to provoke trouble. I heard that the Qin State had dispatched more than 4,000 new troops from Hebei to Shenyang and Jilin, and was ready for battle. With so many troubles erupting one after another, I'm afraid that the treasury of the Qin State will be emptied! In this way, they have to rack their brains to open up more sources of income. It is also a proper move to take a knife on us foreign businessmen. ”

"Phew, the Great Qin Imperial Court has no money, just arrest a few Lianghuai salt merchants, and the money will come." Niu Xianting took a sip and looked unconcerned, "Look at those salt merchants, they have raised the price of thin horses to five thousand yuan!" Damn, they don't know how much gold and silver they have piled up in their homes! ”

"Huh?" Qi Zhenglun turned his head to look at the stage, only to see that the old bustard on the Yanfang was already smiling so badly that his eyebrows and eyes were rotten, and he kept throwing his hands at the enthusiastic buyers in the audience, showing that he was extremely happy to sell the "thin horse" he had trained for many years at a good price.

"It's a pity!" Qi Zhenglun looked hatefully at the small compartment on the right side of the hall that quoted the price of six thousand silver dollars, and a man who looked like him swept towards the hall with a wide range of eyes, as if he was proud of his master's strong financial resources.

Originally, he wanted to buy a "skinny horse" to enjoy it, and by the way, he brought it back to Qi Guo to show off with his peers, but the auction price had already exceeded the budget in his heart, so he could only choose to give up.

Six thousand yuan is enough to buy ten superb female white slaves in Persia and Ottoman!

This "skinny horse" is really too expensive!

However, the silent performance and frustrated expressions of these Qi merchants made many Qin merchants present secretly refreshed.

Don't the people of Qi claim to be rich?

Over the years, we have borrowed tens of millions of taels of silver from our Daqin Imperial Court one after another, and every year I also buy boatloads of tea, porcelain, silk, as well as various medicinal materials and tung oil from my Daqin, just like a nouveau riche who is not bad for money.

What's the matter, spend thousands of dollars to buy a "thin horse" and search it, but you can't get the money?

In the past few decades, the views of the Qin people on the mainland towards Qi Guo have been full of contradictions and entanglements.

It is true that when the former Ming Dynasty collapsed and the Qing captives ravaged Shenzhou, the Qi State spared no effort to support the anti-Qing forces from all walks of life, and even saved Shenzhou from the time of overthrow several times, so that the Qing captives were never able to completely destroy the succession of our Han people, and retained a trace of the possibility of a reversal. Until the Second Northern Expedition of our Great Qin, the State of Qi helped the Qin army to attack the Yellow Dragon and capture Beijing in one fell swoop, thus expelling the Qing captives from the Central Plains and restoring the Han family.

At that time, whether it was the gentry officials or the common people of Lishu, they all expressed their gratitude to the Qi State, believing that the Qi State was the same as the Chinese lineage, flesh and blood, and had a reinvention of our Great Qin.

With the end of the large-scale war in China, the economy of the Qin State began to gradually recover and grow, especially in the Jiangnan, Liangguang, Fujian and other regions that were the first to recover, not only agricultural production recovered to the pre-Ming period, but even industry and commerce began to rebound rapidly. The influx of countless Qi capital and commodities has greatly prospered the economy of Jiangnan and strengthened the economic and trade exchanges between the two countries.

However, with the passage of time, after the growth of Qi's manufactured goods in the mainland market to a certain extent, it fell into a long-term stagnation stage, and even in some periods and regions, the sales of Qi's goods did not rise but declined, and there was a huge trade deficit. Between the two sides, some friction and disputes began to appear.

I have to admit that the large machine industry of Qi is indeed more efficient than the handicraft industry in Qin, but the labor cost of Qin is so cheap that it is almost free, so that their machines have lost their due meaning.

In the Qin State, especially in the Jiangnan region, almost every qualified farmer has a loom, so that the Qin State not only does not need the woven cloth of the Qi State, but continuously exports its cotton fabrics to North Korea, Japan, Annam and other countries and regions, squeezing the market that the Qi State has finally "laid".

For the vast number of peasant households in the Qin State, which accounted for the majority of the population at that time, the clothes on their bodies were basically from traditional handicraft family workshops.

"On the streets of every village, there are old women in every house, sitting on an old-fashioned spinning wheel, like a picture of ancient times."

Qi could only sell some manufactured industrial products that Qin could not produce itself, or whose economic costs were relatively low, disappointing many merchants who wanted to dig a pot of gold on the mainland.

However, while complaining and slandering, the nimble Qi people found that they could make a lot of profits by making entrepot trade in tea, porcelain and silk and reselling them to India, Persia, Ottomans, and even Europe and other countries and regions, so they used their control of various sea routes to quickly control the trade monopoly of the above-mentioned goods.

As a result of mastering the sales channels and controlling the sea traffic to the outside world, the merchants of the Qi State soon gained the right to price their goods, and they could do business at all sides.

In recent years, whether it is tea, porcelain, silk and other traditional goods, or tung oil, pig bristles, medicinal materials, minerals, handicrafts, etc., the total volume of trade has increased by eight to ten times compared with the early Qin period, but the amount of trade has only increased by less than five times.

"The increment does not increase the price", which means that the more things Qin sells, the thinner the profit will be, which makes the merchants of Qin extremely depressed.

And some well-informed Qin merchants learned that when the Qi people sold those goods to Westerners, the price did not decrease at all, and sometimes they even deliberately controlled the scale of the output, artificially inflated the price, one in and one out, and made super high profits.

This move was undoubtedly extremely hated by the merchants of the Qin State, and you Qi people clearly snatched the profits that should have belonged to us!

The Qi people controlled the South Seas, controlled the Strait of Malacca, controlled the entire Indian Ocean, and were even seeking to control the entire ocean and grasp the pulse of the world, while the merchants of the Qin State could only sigh when they looked back at their weak sailor ships.

There is a bit of envy in jealousy, and in addition to envy, there will also be a trace of jealousy.

The country of Qi, which was built on a wild land, is no longer the same as in the past, and the kingdom of the Celestial Empire, which was once high above, had to bow down and look up at this "brother" who was connected to the same branch and culture in China.

But the ancient civilization that has lasted for thousands of years will always have an unyielding momentum in its bones, as long as it can overwhelm the people of Qi in some aspects, why not give some money.

Just a "thin horse", he should spend a lot of money, so that these Qi people from the Han continent can see the courage of my Great Qin merchants.

Just as the Yangzhou salt merchant was about to step forward to lead the gorgeous "thin horse" with a proud face amid the compliments and congratulations of many merchants in the hall, he was stopped by the owner of the Yanfang who came in a hurry.

"The Queen Mother passed away, and it was forbidden to smoke and entertain all industries, let alone have fun." The owner said apologetically, "Therefore, I am afraid that the girl here will not be able to enjoy it for the time being." Accuse, accuse. And please wait for a month, okay? ”

When the salt merchant heard this, he stood on the spot.

What, the Queen Mother died?!

(End of chapter)