Chapter 009
"Master, the meal is ready!"
In fact, before the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there was no cuisine in China, at least it was different from the current concept of cuisine. To be honest, it is probably the only kind of water banquet that is now available in Luoyang. Because before the emergence of stir-fry dishes, everyone just cooked them, that is, boiled, stewed and barbecued. In addition to roasting, most of them were various dishes with soup. If you have eaten Luoyang water banquet, you will know what it is like.
All the dishes made by Yang Yuniang are not stir-fried, but all come with soup, for example, a mutton stew, a hen stew, winter melon vermicelli soup, and lotus root glutinous rice soup.
Every dish comes with soup. Yang Yuniang put it on the table Yiyi.
"Ming Yu, come over for dinner!"
"coming!"
Shen Mingyu stood on the basin stand outside the kitchen and began to wash his hands.
Yang Yuniang felt a little uncomfortable being stared at by Shen Mingyu.
"Don't worry, I'm Yan, not a bandit!"
Yan only uses her beauty to deceive people and will never use force. In fact, Yang Yunniang doesn't have any force. If she is asked to fight, she can only deliver food.
Shen Mingyu stared at Yang Yunniang very hard. When cooking in her kitchen, Yang Yuniang would eat every dish first.
Although the dishes are not as good as Liu Ji's cook, Cheng Shijie is used to living a hard life, especially when Xiang Hui married him, he cooked dark dishes. After having a child, Cheng Shijie needed to travel frequently, and Xiang Huiman's cooking skills gradually improved.
Three people sat around to eat in the restaurant of the main house.
Yang Yunniang asked cautiously: "My boss, the broker hasn't come back yet!"
"No!"
"Those brokers are just bullying the big families, but if the boss is new here, I'm afraid they won't be polite!"
Yang Yunniang kindly reminded Cheng Shijie not to be deceived by Song Kangnian.
How could Cheng Shijie not know that the helpers on the streets were unreliable? That's why he used heavy profits to attract Song Kangnian. Even if the quality of this kind of weapon made in later generations was low, it was still high-carbon steel. And the products he bought were all mid-to-high-end products. Looking at the alloy composition on the manual, it turned out to be made of high-manganese steel.
Although the cost is not high, it can be sold in the Ming Dynasty for more than 20 taels of silver. You must know that the iron blade made in the Ming Dynasty is only 89 taels of silver. Even an ordinary kitchen knife in later generations was considered a magic weapon in the Ming Dynasty.
This is the crushing of technology.
Cheng Shijie didn't care too much about this issue. There are risks in doing business. If you are cheated, you will be cheated. If Song Kangnian ran away with his two knives, there was nothing he could do. After all, he was new here and had no clues.
However, now Cheng Shijie decided to go outside the city to see if he could travel outside the city every time. Cheng Shijie did not feel safe at all inside the city.
"Yun Niang...I am going to put a sum of money with you. You are responsible for purchasing the ingredients yourself. You can show me the detailed accounts every month. As for the food, every meal must have meat, buy more fish, Eggs and meat, each meal should be purchased for four people, not six people!"
Cheng Shijie glanced at Shen Mingyu, who was silently eating. This guy was a big-bellied man. He could eat three portions of Cheng Shijie's food alone. If there is no meat, the rice will be eaten more.
"When the food is ready, you don't have to bring it to the room for me alone. Just call me. If you want, you can also dine with us!"
"How is that possible? There are no rules at all!"
Yang Yunniang secretly muttered, Cheng Shijie is too careless, doesn't he need confidants to manage the accounts? Although the money for food is not much, a lot of money can be deducted from it. Cheng Shijie will definitely not be able to find out how much money is a month.
Besides, it’s nothing for Cheng Shijie to eat meat every day, but Shen Mingyu is just a servant. One stone of rice in Dengzhou only costs four coins and three coins for Chen rice. Even if Shen Mingyu eats one liter of polished rice every day, it will only cost him one month. It doesn't cost three cents of silver, but a chicken costs twenty or thirty cents, which is enough for Shen Mingyu to eat for five days.
Yang Yunniang thought about how to remind Cheng Shijie that firewood, rice, oil and salt were expensive.
Cheng Shijie certainly knows that eating meat is more expensive than eating rice and will cost a lot more money, but the problem is that he still has no confidants, and he still expects Shen Mingyu to work hard for him and make Shen Mingyu eat meat every day. With such a boss, he It will certainly be hard to find a second one.
For the sake of his own job, Shen Mingyu will definitely protect Cheng Shijie.
Shen Mingyu did this indeed.
There is a liar following him, but Yang Yuniang has not taken action yet. Even if he tells Cheng Shijie, Cheng Shijie may not believe him, but it will make Cheng Shijie no longer trust him.
At this moment, there was a knock on the door.
Cheng Shijie didn't move, and Shen Mingyu naturally stood up and walked towards the door.
"Slow down, slow down, yes, be careful!"
Cheng Shijie looked at the direction of the gate and saw Song Kangnian commanding a dozen porters to push three carts into the East Crossing Courtyard. Originally, the East Crossing Courtyard was not large, and the three carts almost filled the yard.
Cheng Shijie put down his chopsticks: "This is..."
"Fortunately, I live up to my fate!"
Song Kangnian was a little proud. He overfulfilled Cheng Shijie's task and sold the sword that Cheng Shijie priced at twenty taels of silver for five hundred taels of silver each.
The Dongjiang Army is very poor and can be said to be a beggar-like army. In the eight years since Mao Wenlong opened the town, he received a total of more than 800,000 taels of silver from the court in name, but in fact received more than 293,000 taels. The Ministry of Husbandry and the Ministry of War ate more than 500,000 taels of silver, and named it Piao. without.
The average expenditure of Guan Ning's soldiers was three taels and nine cents of silver, but the average expenditure of Dongjiang's soldiers was less than four cents of silver, which was a little more than one penny per day on average. This amount of money was not enough for food, let alone salt. No matter how poor the Dongjiang Army is, the generals are actually not poor.
For example, Geng Zhongming was the military affairs manager of the Dongjiang Army as early as Mao Wenlong's era, responsible for managing the Dongjiang Army's money and food.
This position is of high authority and should not be given to someone other than a close confidant. Geng Zhongming can fulfill this position mainly because he is the adopted grandson of Mao Wenlong and the adopted son of Mao Chenglu. He, Kong Youde, and Shang Kexi are all adopted grandchildren of Mao Wenlong, and they are all given the surname Mao. Kong Youde is named Mao Yongshi, Geng Zhongming is named Mao Youjie, and Shang Kexi is called Mao Yongxi.
During the Mao Wenlong era, Geng Zhongming naturally did not dare to corrupt. However, he did not actually need to corrupt, because the Dongjiang Army also had a way to make money. The slaves like to be buried like a lavish burial, especially after the massacre of Liaodong. The land was scraped three feet away and a lot of property was gained. The Dongjiang Army often attacked Jiannu and captured many of them.
The coastal islands occupied by the Dongjiang Army had little arable land. If they had no money to buy food, they would have starved to death long ago without fighting. Geng Zhongming could also use the navy of the Dongjiang Army to rob the cargo ships smuggled by the Ming Dynasty and make a lot of profits. In Geng Zhongming's view, Yuan Chonghuan's killing of Mao Wenlong was not without the element of profit.
The financial backers behind the Donglin Party are the Jiangnan officials and gentry group. They control the smuggling channels from Jiangnan to North Korea and Japan, but the Dongjiang Army takes advantage of its geographical advantage to get a share of the pie. Although the Dongjiang Army was very secretive, there was no need for evidence for this kind of thing. A suspicion was enough.
The issue that Geng Zhongming was very worried about was that after Huang Long became the commander-in-chief of the Dongjiang Army, he would not let go of Geng Zhongyu, hoping to use Geng Zhongyu to open a gap in the Mao Group of the Dongjiang Army. He hoped that this magical weapon would be given to Huang Long so that Huang Long could take it away as soon as he saw fit.
What Geng Zhongming paid Song Kangnian was not all silver. Among them were 150 pieces of high-quality silk worth twelve taels of silver. Such silk could be sold to Europe for at least more than a hundred taels of silver.
In ancient times, cloth itself could replace currency. Three carts pulled one hundred and fifty pieces of silk, and thirty pieces of Songjiang cotton worth one hundred taels of silver, followed by silver.
"Did you sell it?"
"sold!"
When Song Kangnian saw Cheng Shijie eating, he was not polite and sat down directly. He picked up the chopsticks used by Yang Yunniang, picked up a piece of mutton, and stuffed it into his mouth.
"Yes, it's delicious...Mr. Cheng can hand over twenty knives to them."
"sharp!"
Cheng Shijie opened the cabinet and asked Shen Mingyu to take the sword to the car in the yard.
Along with the three carts came a man who looked like a steward. He pulled out swords one by one to inspect the goods. As expected, as Song Kangnian said, they were all magic weapons and high-quality products.
Song Kangnian held a chicken leg in one hand and walked up to the steward and said: "Now that the money and goods are cleared, you go back and tell General Geng that I have done a fortune telling for him. He has had a small calamity recently. The problem is not big. Don't worry. You don’t have to do anything, you can get through this naturally!”
"Thank you sir!"
The steward put the sword on the cart, then asked people to unload the cloth and silver, and left directly.
Cheng Shijie looked at four huge boxes: "Twenty knives, how much did you sell them for?"
"Ten thousand taels!"
Song Kangnian looked at Cheng Shijie with a faint smile: "Do you still take what Mr. Cheng said before seriously?"
Cheng Shijie priced it at 20 taels, but Song Kangnian directly sold it for 500 taels, which was an excess of 480 taels of silver. Now that the delivery was completed, Song Kangnian also wanted to see how Cheng Shijie, who he could not see through, made a decision.
Although Cheng Shijie was not a businessman in later generations, he still knew the value of goods and had a direct relationship with people. By chance, he saw the logistics bill of Hansteel Group. Hansteel Group used white thread gloves for its employees. In a certain Baobao average It costs less than one yuan a pair, but the purchase price from the purchasing department of Hansteel Group is fifteen yuan per unit.
For example, Hansteel Group needs hundreds of thousands of pairs of white-line gloves every month, and the purchase price will only be cheaper. However, in fact, it has increased fifteen or sixteen times.
The most profitable thing is actually not the manufacturer, but the second-hand dealer. Cheng Shijie's uncle, Xiang Zhi, grows watermelons, and the truck price is only 20 cents per catty. However, Cheng Shijie never buys watermelons for less than one yuan in the supermarket. Whether it’s vegetables or meat, farmers and herdsmen only earn a negligible part of the money, and the larger part is made away by second-rate dealers.
Because they control channels and connections, these are the most valuable resources.
After just thinking for a moment, Cheng Shijie smiled faintly and said: "As a human being, the most honest thing that belongs to Cheng is only four hundred taels, and the rest belongs to Mr. Song!"
PS: It’s actually a stand-alone mode now. Lao Cheng is feeling flustered. Please vote and support!
