No matter from the appearance or other aspects, the spirit gold and gold are exactly the same, but in the hands of the cultivators can distinguish the difference, the people of the money village are mortals, and they did not see that this is several times more precious than gold spirit gold, just as Zhao Dagui deposited more than 2,000 taels of gold on the cabinet, and gave 30,000 pieces of ocean silver tickets, with a monthly interest of three cents, that is, a monthly interest of three percent.

With these 30,000 yuan, plus the 20,000 yuan left before upgrading the library, Zhao Dagui has 50,000 silver dollars available in his hand.

Zhao Dagui got about 20,000 yuan of foreign goods, including 5,000 horses of foreign cloth and clocks, bird's nests, glassware and other best-selling goods, and took dozens of people such as the shopkeeper of the trading house, his buddies and the dart master of the Fuwei Dart Bureau, hired a boat, and went straight to Suzhou.

At this time, the compradors had just come into contact with the foreign business, and most of them belonged to the newcomers who had just entered the industry, although the scale of the business was very large, but the scope of activities was mainly limited to the area around the magic capital, and they did not go to Suzhou to open up new markets.

In this way, Zhao Dagui was the first to operate tea, the first to go to Huzhou to purchase Husi, and the first to expand in Suzhou.

Take a boat from the magic capital, through the Wusong River (Suzhou Creek) to Suzhou, the boat distance is only 100 kilometers, you can get there in a day, and it is very safe, almost never heard of a water bandit attacking a merchant ship of more than 100 tons, so it is much safer than going to Huzhou.

Of course, small boats under ten tons, there are a few missing every year, so don't worry about those.

Zhao Dagui thought about why the river road to Suzhou is so safe, and summed up three reasons:

First of all, the magic capital is very close to Suzhou, only a hundred kilometers, and the sailing ship can reach it in a daytime, and there is no need to sail at night;

Secondly, the width of the Huangpu River is 300 to 700 meters, compared with the width of the Wusong River, which is only a few tens of meters, which makes the water bandits have much less room to fight on the water;

Third, the most important thing is that Suzhou and Modu belong to the same jurisdiction, that is, both belong to the Susong Taidao of Liangjiang Province, which is under the direct control of Su Songtai Bingbei Daogong Mujiu, while Huzhou belongs to Zhejiang, and there are many places where the security problems of inter-provincial traffic are involved, giving the water bandits a lot of living space.

Suzhou has always been a rich place in the Central Plains, once there was a saying that "Suzhou and Hangzhou are ripe, the world is full", and it was also very prosperous in this period, from the construction level of the city outline and street buildings, it is much stronger than the magic capital as a county seat.

Foreigners made a comment after the magic capital, thinking that from the perspective of the prosperity of the market, Suzhou is the best, followed by Ningbo, and the magic capital is the worst.

Ningbo is also one of the five ports of commerce, the British had high hopes for this port, thinking that Ningbo's trade would not be worse than the magic capital, but the reality slapped them in the face, Ningbo at the beginning of the business of Dinghai fluttered for a while, and when Dinghai was returned to the Qing government, the situation plummeted;

Until the 50s, the number of foreigners doing business in the Ningbo Concession was only in the single digits, and the total volume of trade was often less than one-tenth of that of the magic capital.

The other two ports of trade, Fuzhou and Xiamen, were also in poor condition, and until the fifties, only seven ships visited these two ports, and the number of foreign merchants was only in the single digits, and the Fuzhou concession experienced a period of embarrassment without any foreign merchants living there.

In this way, at least until the outbreak of the Taiping Rebellion and the tea trade in Fuzhou was taken seriously by foreigners, more than ninety percent of the foreign trade of the five ports opened under the Jiangning Treaty was supported by the magic capital and Guangzhou.

Speaking of Suzhou, Suzhou's annual tax payment to the imperial court is more than 1.6 million taels of silver, which is more than one million taels of magic capital, but considering that the magic capital is only a small county town and the population is much smaller than Suzhou, according to the per capita tax paid, the people of the magic capital are actually higher than Suzhou.

In addition, Suzhou has developed hundreds of industries, and the overall level is much higher than that of the magic capital, and the most important handicraft industry in the magic capital is cotton weaving, while Suzhou belongs to the situation of silk textile and cotton textile at the same time.

Yes, Suzhou was one of the most important silk textile bases of the Qing Dynasty in this era, second only to Nanjing in terms of status and output, and above other important silk producing areas such as Hangzhou and Ningbo.

After Zhao Dagui took people to Suzhou, he went to the major warehouses to investigate, mainly tea and silk stacks, and finally decided to focus on raw silk trade, supplemented by tea trade.

The export profit of tea is 40 to 50 percent, but the profit of raw silk trade can reach more than 100 percent, and it is more appropriate to understand how to do business without a high level of mathematics.

According to British official data, from July 1, 1844 to June 30, 1845, Shanghai silk tea exports were 3800027 pounds of tea, less than 30,000 quintals, and raw silk exports were 6,433 bales.

In terms of value, the price of 30,000 quintals of tea is only 30 or 40 percent of that of more than 6,000 bales of raw silk, and it can only be said that the majority of Chinese merchants who noticed that raw silk was more profitable.

By the way, during this period, Guangzhou's raw silk exports were also more than 6,000 bales, only dozens of bales more than Shanghai;

During this period, the annual consumption of raw silk in Britain was 60,000 bales or 6.3 million pounds, and it was mainly for the consumption of its own people, and the consumption of raw silk in France and Italy, which were the real major silk producers, must have been much more than that of Britain.

To sum up, it can be known that China's annual export of raw silk in 1844 reached nearly 13,000 bales, but in the raw silk market in Europe and the United States, this output is nothing at all, there is still a lot of room for improvement, and at the same time, the influence on the consumption of raw silk in the European and American markets is probably far lower than the estimation of many amateurs.

Moreover, by 1847 the price of raw silk in China would be more than thirty-five per cent lower than it had been in 1843 (or '44), "benefiting the English silk weavers" and "arousing an optimistic expectation that it would continue to increase until Chinese silk would replace most of the Turkish, Italian, and French silk in British consumption, in favour of the British manufacturers." ”

(Note: The above quotation marks are from "B.P.P.: Returns of the Trade of the Various Ports in China,for the Years 1847,1848")

Suzhou also has a long operating time, relatively large scale of tea and silk stacks, Zhao Dagui and these businessmen contact, only to find that his reputation has long been spread to the ears of these businessmen, many people from various channels know that the magic capital has a good relationship with foreigners of the big businessman, do things fairly, pay is also refreshing.

It's just that after Zhao Dagui investigated the situation, he also found that there were many problems.

The price of tea in Suzhou is similar to that of the magic capital, but the price of raw silk is much higher.

For example, Zhao Dagui went to Huzhou to buy Jili silk, and each pack was about 160 yuan, but in Suzhou, the price of buying the same Jili silk was as high as 200 yuan to 250 yuan.

At first, I thought it was a businessman in Suzhou who bullied him, and he joined forces to raise the price, but after careful inquiry, it was really not, the price of raw silk here was much higher than that in Huzhou.