This time he went to the magic capital to sell raw silk, Liu Yong made a lot of money, and after returning to Nanxun, he didn't know how to be quiet, and continued to buy raw silk in Nanxun as before, and then sold it in the magic capital, so he kept going back and forth.

Relying on this, Liu Yong earned hundreds of thousands of taels of silver in just one winter, accumulated a huge amount of original capital, and laid the foundation for becoming the richest man in Huzhou's raw silk industry.

Zhao Dagui has survived Liu Yong's story before, and he has always been envious of Liu Yong's good luck.

The merchants of the Qing Dynasty in this era had a very interesting habit, according to the traditional public customs, only their own business, neither understanding nor willing to understand the trade methods and trade prices of the upper or lower families in the business chain, thinking that then they would break the rules and not be able to do business for a long time.

This kind of thinking was acceptable under the public bank model in the feudal era, and even the government and feudal guilds required merchants to operate according to this tradition, otherwise they would be punished.

However, after the influx of foreign businessmen, this outdated model is somewhat behind the times.

In fact, after the signing of the Treaty of Nanking and the beginning of the five-port trade, foreign merchants had the opportunity to go deep into China for the first time to do business, and more than once they were amazed at the ignorance of the merchants' information about prices.

Taking tea as an example, after the tea merchants in the tea-producing areas ship the tea to the tea houses in the magic capital to sell them, they only know how much money they can get, but they do not know how much the tea houses charge for selling tea to foreign companies.

Chinese have always regarded themselves as business-savvy nations, but the ignorance of prices in various business chains expressed during this period was shocking, and this situation continued into the late 19th and even early 20th centuries.

In fact, when it comes to raw silk, the trade profit of raw silk is much higher than that of tea.

In the early Qing Dynasty's trade with Japan, merchants bought lake silk at a price of one catty and one tael, and sold it to Japan at the price of three taels or four taels per catty, which was cheaper and more than two taels or five yuan, and the profits in the middle were extremely considerable.

Of course, considering that Japan charges more than 60 percent tariffs on trade, and there are some miscellaneous fees, this profit is not exclusive to the merchants.

From the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century, Sino-Japanese trade continued to decline, and by the Daoguang period, there were almost no merchants selling raw silk to Japan, but the business of selling raw silk to Europe and the United States through Guangzhou has never stopped, and the scale is not small.

At the time of the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing, the British took out the trade materials of the previous years to negotiate the tariff rate, of which the purchase price of Guangdong raw silk was about 200 yuan per quintal, and the purchase price of Zhejiang silk (that is, Huzhou silk) reached about 400 yuan per quintal because of its good quality.

What the British did not expect was that, in terms of domestic sales price alone, although the quality of Zhejiang silk was much better than that of Guangdong silk, the domestic price in China was not much higher than that of Guangdong silk, at most one or two percent worse.

According to the records of the local chronicles of the magic capital, the total export volume of raw silk in the city in 1844 after the opening of the port was 6,433 bags, and the selling price was 390 yuan to 480 yuan per package of Huzhou Jili silk, 300 yuan to 365 yuan per package of large silk, and 280 yuan to 470 yuan per package of round filigree.

Among them, the big silk and round filigree are 100 catties per bag, but the Huzhou Jili silk is 80 catties per bag, which means that the price of Huzhou silk is about 5 yuan to 6 yuan per catty.

It is not difficult to understand why Liu Yong was willing to buy all the raw silk in his hands at a price of two taels per catty of raw silk (about three yuan and two jiao) when he sold raw silk to the foreign company in the magic capital in the winter of 1846.

However, the export price of raw silk, like tea, was at its highest in 1843 and 1844 when foreigners were unfamiliar with the situation, and then decreased year by year, reaching its lowest point around 1849, and then gradually rising.

In any case, the period when Zhao Dagui arrived in Nanxun was the time when the raw silk trade was the most profitable and the business was the best.

Prior to this, the profits of both tea and raw silk were monopolized by the Thirteen Merchants of Guangzhou, and it was not until after the Five Ports of Commerce that merchants outside the Thirteen Merchants had the opportunity to set foot in these hugely profitable trade industries.

According to the regular history, the first Western businessman to set foot in the raw silk industry in the magic capital was not the British, but the American Qichang Foreign Company, which sent people to Huzhou by boat, bought raw silk and sold it abroad, and grabbed an astonishing profit.

Considering that the biggest business partner of Qichang Foreign Company in the magic capital during this period was Wu Jianzhang, it can be predicted that Wu Jianzhang contributed a lot in this matter;

Considering that Yang Fang, the comprador of Jardine Matheson, was born as a silk village guy in Ningbo, Jardine Matheson must have made a lot of money in this area later, and it is not difficult to explain why Yang Fang, a small person who ran to the magic capital in debt, was able to amass a huge fortune of more than one million taels in a few years.

So, what is the price of raw silk produced by European countries in this era?

The price of raw silk in Europe and the United States during this period was extremely expensive, and the price of raw silk in Italy or France in Europe was at least 600 yuan per 100 catties, and in terms of quality alone, all foreign records before 1870 showed that the quality of Huzhou Jili silk was far better than that of French silk.

This also led many foreigners to believe that with a little more effort, Chinese businessmen could completely expel French raw silk and silk products from the American market, and then monopolize the American market.

Unfortunately, this did not happen, and in the end, it was the Japanese raw silk that came first, taking over the silk fabric market in Europe and the United States.

The 1879 "Commercial Reports" contain an interesting account of the Chinese raw silk industry.

"When raw silk arrives in England and is haired, it is reeled and divided into small bundles before it is woven into silk fabric. But labor is expensive in the United States, and it is more cost-effective for importers to reel the raw silk on the spot before it leaves the magic capital. This kind of silk is called reeling.

Recently, a raw silk inspector showed me some rewinding ,... It was compared with the silk that had not been reeled.

The latter kind of silk seemed to me, a layman, to be a white spider's web, from which it would be difficult for any non-professional silk reeler to extract a fiber more than a few feet long;

Reeling, on the other hand, resembles a bright, smooth thread.

My friend told me that in Lyon ordinary white silk is worth 47 francs per kilogram, while recoiling is worth 63 francs. ”

Looking at the exchange rate between the pound and the franc here, the gold content of the pound in this era was 7.32238 grams per pound and 0.2903225 grams per franc.

In this way, ordinary white silk is equivalent to about 1.8633 pounds per kilogram, which is equivalent to 5.59 taels, and reeling silk is equivalent to about 2.497 pounds per kilogram, which is equivalent to 7.493 taels.

According to the Qing Dynasty, one catty is equivalent to 605 grams, ordinary white silk is equivalent to about 1.127 pounds per catty, which is equivalent to 3.382 taels, which is about 5.268 yuan, and reeling silk is about 1.511 pounds per catty, which is equivalent to 4.532 taels, which is about 7.061 yuan.

There should be a big gap between the price information of raw silk in 1879 and the situation in 1843, but from the above information, we can still get a glimpse of the basic situation of raw silk trade at that time.

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