The fifth day of the fifth month of May.
The annual Dragon Boat Festival.
Even in the Tang Dynasty, the Dragon Boat Festival was one of the most important holidays of the year.
Not only do the people have some traditional activities, such as rowing dragon boats, making zongzi, inserting mugwort leaves, drinking realgar wine, etc., the government will also have a special Dragon Boat Festival holiday, and officials will take vacations.
When Li Chao spent the Dragon Boat Festival in Chang'an, in addition to japonica rice, the zongzi he ate also had glutinous rice, as well as ingredients for millet and forest dates.
The people of Chang'an like to eat Baisuo zongzi during the Dragon Boat Festival.
Wrap many colorful silk threads and weave grass ropes on the zongzi, which is called Baisuo zongzi.
Even on this day, the palace will ask the palace ladies to make a lot of dough zongzi, so that people can shoot with a small horn bow, and whoever shoots will give it to whoever eats.
Since the opening of Ningyuan City in early May, since the first day of the opening of the market, its liveliness has far exceeded everyone's expectations.
The Turks were very interested in trading with Han merchants.
They drove camels, horses, and many fur medicinal herbs, and also drove herds of cattle and sheep south to Ningyuan.
And the Han merchants in Ningyuan City were also waiting for this day to come.
All kinds of Central Plains commodities have long been piled up in warehouses.
Even some businessmen with average strength, in order to stock up on more goods, deliberately borrowed a lot of money from Li Ji Qian Zhuang to prepare them.
The fleet newly formed by the Li family is now extremely busy, with 300 large and small merchant ships sailing on the Yellow River day and night.
Mainly from Lingzhou back to Lecheng to transfer goods to Ningyuan, this 400 miles of waterway, because the river is wide, the water flow is slow, so it is quite suitable for navigation, day and night can be boated.
The boatmen invited by the Li family's fleet are all old sailors on the Yellow River, four hundred miles, and it is downstream, and they can arrive in one day and night.
Early in the morning, I returned to Lecheng from Lingzhou to leave the wharf with full of goods, and arrived at the wharf of Ningyuan West City early the next morning, unloaded the goods, and just had a fragrant breakfast on the wharf.
There are too many commercial goods, and the Li family's fleet cannot cover all the shipping volumes, and many other businesses also organize merchant ships to run shipping, and some fishermen ask Li Ji Qianzhuang for loans, buy new ships from the Li family's Lingzhou shipyard, and then dock the ship to Li Ji's fleet, follow the business to transport goods, pay some management fees, and then dividends.
The crew carried a shipload of merchant goods to Ningyuan.
Silk, cloth, tea, medicinal herbs, cane sugar, wine, rice, flour, pottery, porcelain, iron pots, salt, etc., there are many varieties, except for iron, copper, ordnance and materials for making ordnance are forbidden to trade with the Turks, basically everything in the border city of Ningyuan can be traded with the Turks.
Even some powerful families, such as the Li family, have bought land in Ningyuan to build a workshop, preparing to engage in the processing industry.
We make cooked leather, felt, leather shoes, leather clothing, sake brewing, sauce making, and handmade goods such as tents, jewelry, saddles, and ritual utensils.
In addition, livestock slaughtering, dairy processing, wool textile and other processing industries have also begun to settle in Ningyuan.
Ningyuan Border City has become fat in the eyes of countless people, and everyone wants to pounce on it and take a bite.
According to Li Chao's prediction, the Tang and Turks opened up trade, and with Ningyuan's favorable geographical location and water transportation advantages, at least a few million sheep and camels could be traded here a year, and the trading volume of camels and horses could reach at least 100,000 heads.
There can be at least one million sheepskins, and there will be no shortage of other skins, mushrooms, medicinal herbs, etc.
With so many Turkic commodities, it is natural that they can be exchanged for countless Central Plains commodities.
Tea, wine, salt, sugar, rice, wheat cloth, silk, porcelain, pottery pots, iron pots, etc., are mutually exchanging and are good for both sides.
And the most profitable, of course, is the Tang government that opened the market, as well as the Yu She, who enjoys tariff dividends, and the Turkic and Tang Dynasty merchants who came to trade.
The people of the two countries can also benefit a lot.
Cow and horse fur, there are more of these things, and naturally they are cheaper.
With the addition of such a large export market as the Turks, all kinds of handmade goods in the Tang Dynasty, even all kinds of salt, tea, sugar, wine, silk, cloth, etc., can also increase their sales, and for the Tang Dynasty people who are producers, their income will also increase.
The Turks don't need to rob, they can exchange for countless things they want by trading directly, and they will be satisfied.
After all, cattle and horses are a large amount of valuables for the people of the Central Plains, and for the Turkic herdsmen, they are grazing in groups, and in winter, there is not enough hay, and those bulls and rams have to be killed, which is not worth much at all.
In the eyes of the Turkic herders, an iron pot is a valuable item.
A tea brick is an indispensable and important material.
From the first day of May to the fifth day of May, as soon as the border market opened, it never stopped.
A big fat sheep, ten pieces of tea bricks, one piece weighs one catty.
A slice of tea for a sheepskin.
An ordinary mare or cow is five large sheep, and a camel is ten sheep.
This is the basic price of a transaction, and one stone of corn is exchanged for two sheep.
Ningyuan Border City basically adopts this barter trading method, of course, you can also entrust your goods to Li Kee Trading House for auction, or directly book the goods you want from Li Kee Trading Bank.
Entering the Ningyuan border city for trading, regardless of the Han and Hu merchants, they have to pay a tariff of 20 taxes and 1, and they also have to pay a transaction tax of 20 taxes and 1 when trading.
In addition, those who open shops in Ningyuan City also have to pay residential tax, and they also have to pay a certain amount of public security management, sanitation and other expenses.
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Although the taxes and fees to be paid are the same, there is still an endless stream of Hanhu merchants.
It's really because this kind of trade is actually the most profitable.
The ordinary tea bricks that the Han merchants traded were basically the most inferior teas.
After picking fresh tea leaves, they are processed into wool tea, and there are seven processes, including finishing, initial kneading, initial drying, re-frying, re-kneading, and drying.
Mao tea is then sifted, pressed, dried, and packaged to become brick tea.
The main thing is autoclaving.
Processed into brick-like brick tea, in fact, whether it is the tea used, or the production process, it is very rough, there will never be any only picking young buds and young leaves, almost all the fresh tea leaves are picked and used, and even the tea stalks are also used.
Such tea bricks, even if the imperial court begins to levy a tea tax now, like salt, is levied on the eleventh tax according to the price.
But the increase in this tax is really nothing to these traders.
One pound of tea bricks for a good sheepskin, ten tea bricks can be exchanged for a live big fat sheep.
Fifty catties of tea can be exchanged for a horse or a big cow.
And a big cow, rushed to the Central Plains, at least can be sold for ten times.
The price of tea in the Tang Dynasty also had a variety of prices.
For example, the most expensive tea sold now is the loose tea made by the Li family, among which the kind of black tea that Li Shimin drinks, because it has the golden word given by the emperor, is therefore limited in supply, one catty is worth two taels of gold, and one tael of gold is now worth eight yuan, this catty of tea is worth 16,000 yuan, and it is expensive, but ordinary people have money and can't drink it.
Of course, ordinary loose tea is not available at this price.
Nowadays, the category of loose tea has also begun to increase, the cheapest one is only twenty yuan, and the more expensive one is about 200 yuan a catty.
It's the same with brick tea, which is cheaper for 20 yuan a piece and more expensive for 1,000 yuan a piece.
Naturally, the merchants shipped it would not be a thousand yuan a piece, and most of them were the most inferior tea pieces for twenty yuan a catty.
The Central Plains sold it for twenty yuan a catty, transported it to Ningyuan, and exchanged it for a sheepskin.
Fifty catties for a cow, excluding transportation and other costs, is only 1,000 yuan.
However, if the cow is transported back to the Central Plains, it can be sold for 10,000 to 15,000 yuan.
At least ten times the profit, this is not an ordinary profit, but a big profit.
Good tea is also sold by these merchants.
For example, the Li family's trading house sells all kinds of good tea, and loose tea group tea is sold.
But the price is not ordinarily expensive, the kind of black tea that Li Shimin drinks is the tea of the town store in the store.
In the Central Plains, it is sold for two taels of gold and one catty, and here, the price of gold is directly marked at ten taels and one catty, and you have to book in advance, and it is still sold in limited quantities.
What Wuyi Mountain Tieguanyin black tea is ordinary, it is also a pound and a tael of gold.
What Hangzhou Longjing green tea, eight pounds and one catty, is actually one or two gold and one catty.
Ordinary points, it is at least three or five pounds, and it is not a high-ranking nobleman who is a Turkic spy or a profit, and he must not be able to afford it.
The brick tea sold by Li Ji is not called brick tea, but group tea, and the brick shape is changed to a round cake shape, and then the price has changed from a piece of sheepskin to a piece of sheep, which has directly increased tenfold.
Of course, those Turkic Hu people are not stupid.
They came with oxen and sheep, not to be slaughtered.
They exchanged one sheepskin for one tea brick, and one sheep for ten tea bricks.
Then when he returns to the grassland, he can increase the price tenfold, and he can exchange one tea brick for a sheep with the herdsmen, and ten tea bricks, he can directly exchange it for a camel.
That's trade.
Communicate with each other, and then make a lot of money.
For herdsmen, it is not easy to say that he has lost a pound of tea bricks for this sheep.
Of course, tea is in high demand, as are many other products.
Liquor, sugar, are very popular.
But the most popular should also be the iron pot.
Iron pots of various styles, including hanging iron pots and barrel-shaped stew pots, are selling well.
Every Turkic merchant is almost crazy to buy iron pots, and there is a lot of momentum for later generations of Chinese people to go to Japan to buy toilet seats and Hong Kong to grab milk powder.
Some merchants grabbed the wok, which was generally disliked by the Hu people, because the herdsmen must have found it easier to use than the stewed pot.
But the stir-fried dishes that swept the Central Plains, the Turkic nobles must also want to repay it.
Buy back this wok and sell it to the nobles, how can you make a lot of money.
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Anyway, all the merchants have been desperately shipping these days, preparing many days of inventory, and it is rapidly decreasing.
Truckloads of goods are rapidly turning into cattle, sheep, horses, camels, furs, medicinal herbs, and so on.
Everyone was busy with food and didn't have time to eat, and when they fell asleep at night, they were still excited and forgetful.
The business is too good, the profits are too great, and the money is too easy to make.
Many businesses write letters to their families.
"There are a lot of stupid people here, come quickly" S: Today, a few alliance leaders sent red envelopes in the group, and sent more than 1,000 yuan, I didn't grab any of them, and I couldn't sleep until now t1706231537: