The next day, five Xinghe Banks in Zunhua, Tianjin, and Beijing all put up signs offering gold exchange at high prices. Three days later, Xinghe Bank in Yangzhou and Nanjing also started exchanges. Five days later, Xinghe Bank in Guangzhou also started exchanges.
The Beijing-Tianjin area relied on fast horses to deliver news.
Nanjing, Yangzhou and Guangzhou relied on clipper ships to transmit messages by sea.
After the flying shear ship was opened, Yang Fan had actually controlled the channel through which information could be obtained most quickly.
Normally, it takes a month for news and letters from Guangzhou to reach the capital. Even if it is 800 miles expedited, it is the speed of a clipper ship.
But the expedited 400-mile express is rarely used, let alone the 600-mile and 800-mile express. The cost of delivering messages at such a high speed is staggering.
With the opening of the clipper ship, Yang Fan is already planning to launch passenger transportation and postal services.
In this way, areas along the Yangtze River and coastal areas have entered a rapid communication circle. People, logistics and letter business are a big piece of cake.
You can definitely make a lot of money.
There is currently only one clipper ship in use.
But there are already six 150-ton clipper ships under construction in the dock. The Etoile was only eighty tons, and the new ship doubled its displacement to one hundred and sixty tons.
According to the standards of the Ming Dynasty, it was a thousand material ships. The dock is packed to the brim. Yang Fan urgently needs to build a fleet.
One morning, I was on the edge of the Qinhuai River in Nanjing.
A lot of customers came to Xinghe Bank as soon as it opened.
Because Xinghe Bank has opened exchange business, you can use money orders to deposit and redeem between Zunhua, Beijing, Tianjin, Yangzhou, Nanjing and Guangzhou.
It greatly facilitates merchants to carry funds.
This era is not peaceful, and it is very dangerous to carry thousands of taels of silver.
In the past two years of the Ming Dynasty, hungry people were everywhere, bandits were rampant, and pirates were rampant. There were few roads to peace.
The army and government officials were even more like wolves and tigers. The postmen at the post station took off their official uniforms at night, who knew whether they were humans or ghosts. After all, I haven't been paid for half a year.
If you don't go out and get some, how will the whole family live?
Xinghe Bank's money does not travel by land at all, it is all transported by sea by clipper ship. The bandits and horse bandits on land, the tax collectors and officials can only stare in silence.
You can't even catch a single hair.
If you have the ability, you can swim and catch up. If you catch up, I will pay the tax.
The pirates were so angry that they couldn't rob even if they didn't pay the protection fee.
Because you can't catch up. Tired of rowing and sailing, I couldn't catch up.
In fact, even if you catch up with them, you won't be able to defeat them. The Franco cannons and flintlock guns on the clipper ship will definitely beat the shit out of them.
What's more, the ship is also surrounded by barbed wire and equipped with grenades to prevent gang jumping.
If they really catch up, they will only be worse off.
Nine times out of ten, they either went to the sea to feed the fish, or they were caught and taken to the base on Jeju Island. When five hundred people were gathered, they were sent to Diaoyutai Island to dig out bird droppings.
Now, spring plowing has begun on Yang Fan's land. With good seeds and land, fertilizer is indispensable. If chemical fertilizers are not available, bird droppings are the best choice.
Xinghe Bank is different from other banks. When you deposit money here, not only does it not charge storage fees, but it also returns interest.
This is a strange thing that has never been seen for a long time.
Although the current interest rate is only one thirty thousandth per day, that is, the annual interest rate is about 1.2%. But no matter how small a fly is, it is still meat.
There is no need to pay storage fees, plus interest, it is still a sum of money inside and outside.
The most important thing is safety. As long as you bring an acceptance bill, you can leave. When you are thousands of miles away, you can directly go to Xinghe Bank to withdraw cash. What a good thing.
If you hire an escort to escort the silver car, it will be very expensive and dangerous. After all, the escort cannot defeat the big gangsters.
I heard that not only money can take that kind of fast boat, but passenger service will be launched in the future, and people can also take that kind of fast boat, get on the boat from Nanjing, and reach Tanggu and Beitangkou in one and a half days. We will arrive in the capital in half a day.
How convenient is this? It would take a month to get to Tongzhou by boat on the Grand Canal.
"Good morning, Shopkeeper Yang," a businessman said to another businessman.
"Hey, boss Huang, hello," another businessman said in return.
"Are you here to send money again?"
"Yes, my brother is studying in the Imperial College in Beijing, and he has to remit three hundred taels of silver every month. He can make some useful connections there and do business better, haha."
In Boss Huang's family, only his second brother is good at studying and has already entered the Imperial College. His family is counting on his second brother to pass the imperial examination for high school in order to protect their business.
After all, in the land of Ming Dynasty, without the protection of power, wealth will never exceed three generations.
"Hey, what is that?"
"Our store will exchange silver for gold from now on, at a rate of 7.5 to 1, until enough is exchanged."
Suddenly many people took a breath of air.
Although silver has depreciated somewhat now, it has not reached this price.
The capital might be able to exchange it for seven or a little more. That's because it's more convenient for the capital's elites to use gold to exchange funds.
But the south is different. The further south you go, the more silver is taken up through overseas smuggling trade. The monetary tightening in the market is a chronic disease of the precious metal standard.
Because the quantity of precious metals is limited, once the commodity economy is highly developed, there will be a shortage of money. This will cause deflation and hit the economy.
This is also the reason why later countries abandoned the gold standard and used banknotes. After all, there is an unlimited supply of banknotes.
The more developed the commodity economy and foreign trade, the more expensive the silver price.
Here in Nanjing, the normal fluctuation is only between 6:1 and 6.5:1. The current market price is only about 6.7.
If it's Quanzhou, Yuegang (under Zhangzhou) and Xiamen in Fujian, it's probably only about 5:1 to 5.5:1. Because there is not enough money in the market. The profits from overseas trade are far greater than the price of silver. causing silver prices to rise.
However, the underdeveloped commodity economy in the mainland has caused inflation and the slow depreciation of silver due to the inflow of overseas silver. It can only be said that economics is a very complex subject.
Gold cannot be used directly for commodity transactions. In many cases, it still needs to be exchanged for silver before trading.
Because in the early Ming Dynasty, private gold and silver transactions were prohibited, and only copper coins and banknotes were allowed.
Later, with the large inflow of silver, the ban on silver was lifted and began to be used as currency. However, the ban on gold has never been lifted. For two thousand years, gold's monetary status was officially canceled in the Ming Dynasty.
Gold is not as liquid as silver for various reasons, but its storage and value preservation properties are better. So most of it was hoarded, while the silver was circulated repeatedly.
Now Xinghe Bank actually offered such a high price, and the hundreds of bosses in the hall who came to handle business were all shocked.
If you have gold in your hand, immediately go up and ask the staff at the counter. After finding out that the purchase amount was very large, I immediately ran home to dig out the gold stored in my home. This is a good business to make money by changing hands. Just wait until this gust of wind passes and the price of gold falls to buy it back.
If you don’t have gold in hand, you can also sign a contract with a bank, use your deposit as collateral, agree on a futures price, and deliver the agreed gold within a time limit.
In this way, you can go to other places to buy gold. Then come back and deliver.
This is a way to make quick money.
It only takes a day to travel to Changzhou to buy one hundred taels of gold. One tael is worth eight taels of silver, and one hundred taels is eighty taels.
You can earn 80 taels of silver in one round trip. This is a huge profit. You can earn 2,400 taels in a month.
After the accounts were settled, everyone went crazy.
After the news spread, these people stopped doing their original business. They all signed gold futures contracts with Xinghe Bank and went out to buy gold.
If they raise three cents of silver in other places, they will definitely receive gold, and if they change hands, they will earn five cents of silver.
Let alone one tael of gold and five cents of silver, there are countless people who can earn just one cent of silver.
Because the turnover is too fast.
If you set up a stall to collect gold in the city, you can run back and forth several times a day, and you can also turn around once a day in a nearby county. It can also be turned over once every three to five days.
At this time, there was also a sensation in Zunhua, Beijing, and Tianjin.
Vendors buying gold are everywhere. Although the profits at each level have become much thinner through the acquisitions, the footprints of these small traders have quickly spread across urban and rural areas.
Soon everyone knew that the price of gold was going to rise. Hurry up and sell it for money, then buy it back when the price falls. Judging from historical experience, the price of gold is extremely stable, and this short-term violent rise will not last.
Village women in rural areas even sold small pieces of jewelry such as gold earrings. Nowadays, gold is booming. No matter how big or small, as long as it is gold, someone will buy it.
Chen Xiaohu is a salesman.
Every day he went to the countryside with a heavy load, selling oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, tea, needles, thread, cloth heads, small scissors and so on. They are all small department stores commonly used in people's daily lives.
The salesmen in the county town had not left the city that day when they were suddenly stopped by the owner of Yixingtang Pharmacy. They usually also sell some cooling oils, marching pills and the like made in pharmacies.
The salesmen and pharmacies are also familiar.
"Everyone, I have a good deal for you all."
Seeing everyone looking at him with confusion, Boss Bai continued: "Everyone knows that in Nanjing, one tael of gold is exchanged for six and a half taels of silver. I will give you six taels and eight cents of silver. When you get to the countryside, just let go of collecting gold. , Big or small doesn’t matter, they all need it. As long as it’s gold, don’t worry about earrings, rings, etc. I need them all.”
The buzz among the salesmen suddenly exploded. Being a salesman could not earn more than three cents a month, and it was very hard work. Carrying the burden, I walked thirty or forty miles every day.
If you give the villagers a penny of profit, many people will be tempted to sell the gold.
If you can exchange for half a tael of gold in a day, you will have a net profit of five cents of silver. If you can exchange for one tael of gold, you will have a net profit of one penny of silver.
It's so exciting to have so much profit in one day's turnover.
In the Ming Dynasty, one pound was 600 grams, and the system was sixteen taels. One tael was about 37.5 grams. You could make up one tael of gold with just a few pieces of jewelry.
It’s really not that difficult for the salesman.
"Boss Bai, this is a good business, but we are operating on a small scale and have no capital."
"Yes, we have to exchange silver for gold, but we only have copper coins."
Boss Bai wiped his face depressedly. These people are really not smart enough and said: "Isn't your goods just money? You can use gold jewelry to buy your goods. Isn't this the same? They also have to use copper coins. Came to buy it.”
"Yes, that's what it looks like."
"That's right, why didn't I think of that?"
"Oh, no wonder their business is so big. I am the life of the salesman. It's so irritating that people are so different from each other."
So countless salesmen rushed to rural villages and towns.
When they came back, they found that there was no need to go to Boss Bai to deliver the goods, because there were countless businessmen waiting to buy them at the gate of the city.
One price is higher than the other.
A few days later, they painfully discovered that they could go to Xinghe Bank to deliver the goods themselves. There, one tael of gold was given as much as eight cents of silver.
As an arsonist, Yang Fan had no idea how big the trend he had caused was.
A large amount of gold began to flow from the inland to the eight Xinghe Banks through merchants at all levels.
In ten days, the capital alone purchased one hundred tons of gold. A total of more than 2.66 million taels.
Yang Fan almost dropped his jaw in shock. He knew how corrupt officials in the Ming Dynasty were, but he didn't expect that they would hide so much gold in the capital.
Yang Fan is not afraid of the abundance of gold. There is no shortage of silver in modern society. China exports 10,000 tons of silver for industrial use every year. He can buy as much as he wants.
Xiao Niangpi and Lin Yueru were somewhat disapproving. They both knew the virtues of civil servants. There were quite a few civil servants who were tortured, forced to confess, and had their homes confiscated by Xiao Niangpi and Lin Yueru.
Xiao Niangpi saw that Yang Fan had such a love for gold and couldn't help but said: "Master, do you want to do a business without capital? There is a place where much more gold is hidden than here, but we can't Let people know that this is what we did.”
Yang Fan couldn't react, and there was such a good thing.
Lin Yueru took a deep look at Tu Shanyue. Tu Shanyue was so devoted to the master that she dared to pull such a trick on him.
No wonder the master was so kind to her, and she could never compare to him.
If this matter is leaked, the civil servant group will go crazy, and the emperor will not be able to bear it.
Seeing that Yang Fan didn't understand what was going on, Lin Yueru sighed, grabbed Yang Fan's hand, and wrote a few words on Yang Fan's palm with his green jade fingers.
Lin Yueru knew that if she married a chicken and followed the chicken, married a dog and followed the dog, it was no longer possible for her to stay out of the matter.
In this case, why let Tu Shanyue gain the master's favor alone?
Besides, the civil servants made her adoptive father like a lost dog, and he ran away to the barbarian land. How could he make them feel better?
Today I will use my husband’s hands to give them a slap in the face.
Let them collectively feel heartbroken.
Let them know that eunuchs are not easy to mess with. They know where they will be hit and it will hurt you the most.
Yang Fan felt that Lin Yueru's finger was writing six words.
"Zhangjiawan, Li Sancai"
The corners of Yang Fan's mouth turned up, it turned out to be him, how could he forget about him. This old dog makes a lot of money. Speaking of which, I admire him quite a lot. Most people can't make money as fast as him even if they use a rake. It was famous in the Ming Dynasty.
If this was done, all the civil servants would probably go crazy.
