After exiting the customs gate, what comes into view is a prosperous commercial street.
Every shop on the street hangs a uniform horizontal signboard. Although this structure looks very simple, it can give people an overall simple and clean feeling. The various contents designed on the signboard just make up for the shortcomings of the single structure.
At this time, there was a constant flow of pedestrians on the road. In addition to the Chinese people who could be seen everywhere, there were also many foreigners hanging around. At the same time, in front of many shops there were waiters shouting about their business, and a prosperous scene appeared in front of everyone.
"God, is this the China described in "The Notes of Martin de Rada"①? It is so rich and prosperous, even London may not be much better than here." The scene in front of him made Kennedy sigh.
"Kennedy, although it looks good here now, it's still a little worse than our London. The reason why you praise this place now is because you haven't seen it before." Looking at Kennedy with an adoring look on his face, Jerry hit him mercilessly.
"Oh? Didn't it look like this before?" Kennedy couldn't help but ask after hearing this.
"Of course, I swear in the name of God, I landed here four years ago, and it was not a bad place at that time." Faced with his friend's doubts, Jerry said with confidence.
"On the streets, you can see that most of the pedestrians are wearing mended and tattered clothes. Many civilians have disheveled faces and look like they don't have enough to eat."
"Not only that, there were many beggars on the streets here at that time, begging for a living. The most common ones were officials who dared to blatantly ask for money. In short, at a glance, the civilians who could be seen were just humble and insensitive. It’s just a matter of survival, the whole country sees no hope.”
"But now it seems that the people on the street are not like you described!" Kennedy said, pointing to the people on the street.
"Yes! It seems that it has indeed changed a lot now. After all, when I came here, it was still under the rule of the Tatars. Now I can only say that the new emperor here is indeed a capable man. But I just don't know How long can this situation last? After all, the Tatars are still very strong now." Jerry couldn't help but sigh.
"You are right to say that. The Tatars are just destroying wherever they go. They massacred many people in Europe during the Yellow Peril. The Chinese here can only follow what they say and wish for themselves. ." Kennedy nodded in agreement.
…
"Brother, Jerry, I think we should go find Jonathan first instead of talking about this here." At this time, Alice standing aside interrupted the chat between the two.
"Alice is right, you know where Jonathan lives, right?" Jerry, who came back to his senses, immediately agreed.
"Yes, he said he was at No. 28 Chaofu Road, Huangpu East Road New District, Guangzhou. By the way, he also gave me the Chinese address and said that when I arrive, I can use this note to find someone to guide me there." Ai Li Si said and took out a piece of paper with Chinese characters written on it.
"It seems that we can only find someone to lead the way. I don't know if there is a Chinese guild here. If so, we can find a translator." Jerry looked at Alice's paper and said helplessly.
"Kennedy, haven't you always liked China? You don't know Chinese?"
"I have been living in the UK all my life. All the information I received about China was from English books, and I have never had any contact with Chinese people. How can I learn Chinese?" Kennedy answered bluntly.
"Oh, okay! Let's walk around the streets first and see if we can find someone suitable to guide us!" Jerry suggested.
"OK…"
…
The three of them walked for a while, and suddenly, Kennedy pointed at a place and shouted to Jerry and Alice.
"Look, there are English words written there."
Jerry and Alice followed Kennedy's hand and saw a billboard hanging on the facade of a shop on the street that clearly read "Chinese-English Translation Agency".
"Oh! God. It's so good that there is a translator here." Alice shouted excitedly. She felt one step closer to the Jonathan she longed for.
"Come on, let's go take a look..." Kennedy said.
…
After entering the office, after communicating, Kennedy and others finally got to know something about this place.
The streets here belong to the royal family, so there is no doubt about security and clear transactions here.
Since the second year of Tianze, the imperial court has issued a notice that all merchants who open stores need to log in to the newly established industrial and commercial yamen to apply for a business license before being allowed to open a store. Any shop without a business license must be closed. At the same time, the industrial and commercial yamen will regularly check the relevant conditions of each store, and everything must be clearly marked with a price.
It can be said that there are not many shops today that dare to cheat.
After all, today's "hostility" to merchants is not the slightest, and merchants can receive a commercial tax of up to nearly 30%.
Although this commercial tax is stepped, and most shops may not be able to meet the 30% charging conditions, it still seems a bit heavy compared to the regular tax on the Qingming Festival.
Take pawn shops as an example. In the Qing Dynasty, pawn shops directly charged five taels of silver③ and ignored how much money they made or lost.
Yichao needs to check the business of the pawn shop to collect it. If you do not reach the minimum tax point, you can pay nothing. After reaching the tax point, even one hundred or one thousand taels is not impossible.
Of course, if you are not afraid of death, you can also file false accounts. However, if the local tax bureau checks the account books and finds out, the relevant personnel can be sentenced to death and be punished with loss of property, so not many people dare to falsify accounts.
Although the business tax in Yi Dynasty was very heavy, the merchants did not have no way to survive.
All taxes in the Yi Dynasty were managed by the tax bureau, which was directly responsible for the central government. The local government had no right to formulate any miscellaneous taxes privately.
Therefore, after paying the relevant business taxes, the merchants of the Yi Dynasty would not have other miscellaneous taxes, which left more than those of the Manchu and Qing Dynasties.
Of course, not everyone in the DPRK and China objected to whether the commercial tax collection was too high, but when they learned that the royal shops also paid taxes according to the imperial court's commercial tax standards, they had no choice but to acquiesce to the matter.
Even the emperor has no privileges, how dare they have any opinions? What's more, Zhang Rui also made trouble with the eight imperial merchants of the Manchu and Qing Dynasties in the late Ming Dynasty, so no one dared to come out to seek fame and reputation, lest they be cast aside.
Note ①: A book written by a Spaniard during the Ming Dynasty about what he saw and heard while trading in China.
②: At that time, the West uniformly believed that the Manchus were China ruled by Tatars, so they called the Manchus Tatars.
③For details, see Commercial Tax Collection in the Qing Dynasty.
