Of course there is a reason for Li Yuan's excitement. Who doesn't know that salt is a good thing?
Since the rule of the dynasty, this thing has been one of the important livelihood resources monopolized by the state. Almost every dynasty implemented a salt monopoly system. Monopolized basic materials such as salt, iron, grain and tea would create huge profits every year and bring huge income to the court.
The Southern Tang Dynasty, which was more at peace with the Jianghuai River, was no exception. The sale of private salt was absolutely prohibited, and could only be sold exclusively by the imperial court.
But even so, private salt sales are still prohibited. Just like Li Yuan's personal experience in Chuzhou last year, those private salt dealers still carry out private salt sales even if they risk beheading, because The profits are indeed considerable, and many royal families and politicians will protect it or even personally participate in it.
The salt-producing land of the Southern Tang Dynasty is well known to the whole world. Huainan is the land of the fourteen states in the north of the Yangtze River that Zhou Shizong Chai Rong fought hard to conquer. It is true that this place with a rich population and developed trade is extremely important. Its geographical location and strategic value, but more importantly, whether it can obtain this precious salt-producing land may even affect a country's destiny and future.
According to later historical records, since Li Jing lost the fourteen states in the north of the Yangtze River, the Southern Tang Dynasty could only pay a huge price every year to buy salt from the Zhou State in order to maintain the life needs of the court and the people. The economy and trade collapsed, and the country It can be said that the financial vitality was severely damaged, and it also greatly shook the confidence of the army and the people in the court. There was no land, no money, no population and no salt. This was also one of the important reasons for the demise of the Southern Tang Dynasty.
When Old Man Zou heard that there were salt wells in Lizhou, Li Yuan was extremely shocked. At least according to the real history he knew, Chu land, the place where salt was produced in Hunan, had to wait fifty or sixty years after the fall of the Qing Dynasty.
The "regular consumption of Huai salt" in the past dynasties has been imported by water transport, which is extremely difficult. The general distribution center of Huainan salt is in Twelve Wei, the eastern capital of the Southern Tang Dynasty, in Yangzhou. It is about two thousand miles from Twelve Wei to the Huainan Salt Fields.
The salt boat leaves the river from Twelfth Wei, passes through the Xiaguan Wharf in Jinling, the capital of the country, and then goes westward against the Yangtze River, passing through Ezhou and entering Yuezhou for about 2,100 miles, and then transported to various parts of the country. The average waterway mileage is also 700 to 800 miles. Calculated in this way, if the Huaiyan salt reaches Chu, the average water distance is actually 5,000 miles away, which can be said to be "hard work for every grain".
The history of eating Huai salt in the Chu region lasted until the middle and late Qing Dynasty. At that time, the Manchu and Qing court considered that both western and southern Hunan were mountainous and the roads were rugged, making it difficult to control the proliferation of illegal salt. With the rise of Cantonese salt and Sichuan salt, they gave Hunan is divided into the Guangdong Salt Region and the Sichuan Salt Region. The Guangdong salt sales area is located in the mountainous area of southern Hunan in the north of Nanling, including more than ten counties including Chenxian, Yizhang, Yongxing, Zixing, Guiyang, Leiyang, Jiahe and Lanshan.
There are two main routes for Guangdong salt to enter Hunan. One is to unload the salt from the Beijiang Wharf in Pingshi, Lechang, Guangdong. The salt is transported over the Nanling Mountains to Yizhang by men and mules. It then takes a 90-mile bluestone road to Chenzhou and then enters Leishui; The other line unloads salt from the Lianshui Xingzi Wharf in Lianzhou, Guangdong. It is also transported by mules over the Nanling Mountains to the Shuidong Wharf on the Beijiang River in Linwu, or to the Sherendu Wharf on the Chung Ling River in Guiyang, heading north to Hengyang and entering the Xiangjiang River.
The Sichuan Salt Merger and Sales Area mainly involves purchasing Sichuan salt from nearby mountainous areas in Xiangxi and other places. Later, Lizhou was also included in the Sichuan Salt Merger and Sales Area.
But in terms of sales volume, Huai salt still accounts for 80%, and Guangdong salt and Sichuan salt each account for about 10%.
In a word, without Huai salt, the land of Chu and the world would be difficult to survive.
Speaking of salt prices, the Southern Tang Dynasty was in the Baoda period. Due to the lack of war in the south of the Yangtze River, the population was rich, and the labor force was large, the price of grain and rice was relatively low, but the price of salt remained high, even if it produced salt itself.
Take Jinling as an example. In the tenth year of Baoda, the price of grain in Jinling was only 200 yuan per stone of brown rice, and the price of an ordinary piece of cloth was only 450 yuan. It was considered cheap and benefited the people. This is why for most people in the Southern Tang Dynasty, as long as the whole family works hard, as long as they have one or two incomes a month, they can ensure that the whole family is fed and clothed.
But still in Jinling, the price of salt per bucket is around 300 yuan, which means that the price of rock salt per bucket is around 3 guan. Don’t underestimate the price of salt. There are not many edible things these days. People can only think about seasoning, and the taste is often heavy. Regardless of the fact that people from the north and south like to eat pickled food, this has led to the rise of salt. The consumption is huge.
Just the population of Jinling, Jiangning Prefecture, the capital of the country, and not counting the elite, ordinary people consume nearly half a million dan of coarse salt a year.
. In other words, in Jinling alone, ordinary people spend 1.5 million yuan in income every year on salt consumption.
These are just ordinary people in Jinling. Since the Tang Dynasty, the standard of salt supplied to soldiers in the army is twice that of ordinary people. Counting the Jinling Forbidden Army and the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and horses nearby to defend the capital, these soldiers consume about 50,000 shi of salt every year. This is The consumption of 150,000 yuan.
Furthermore, if you think that only people eat salt, you are totally wrong. The amount of salt consumed by livestock is also extremely large. Especially the war horses in the army. Horses cannot run without salt. Just like people, they must eat salt if they want to have strength.
The Southern Tang Dynasty continued the laws of the Tang Dynasty, which can be seen from the regulations on the supply of horse salt stipulated by the Privy Council: "Horse salt, one horse can support three tons of salt per day, nine liters in one month, five dou and four liters in six months. One army of horses can support thirty-seven liters of salt per day." Five buckets of stone, one thousand one hundred and twenty-five stone in one month, six thousand seven hundred and fifty stone in six months.”
(Note: Ten liters make one liter, ten liters make one bucket, and ten buckets make one stone.)
The so-called "one army of horses" is equivalent to 12,000 war horses. Through maritime trade in the Southern Tang Dynasty, more than 50,000 horses were raised in Jinling alone. Therefore, just for the salt for military horses, Jinling needed more than 20,000 shi, which was also a huge sum of 60,000 guan. As for the salt for livestock raised by the common people, such as pigs, sheep, cattle and horses, there is no need to forget about it...
Looking at the world, there are many countries in the troubled times. Just the small court of the Southern Tang Dynasty, which is located in the Jianghuai River, the people, troops, and war horses, consume an extremely astonishing value of salt every year.
All in all, salt, this is a huge cake. Of course, this cake legally belongs to the court, and only the court is qualified to obtain this huge benefit. Of course, for Li Yuan now, under the current opportunity to guard one side, he no longer has any scruples about whether he dares to touch this piece of cake.
The only prerequisite is that there must be salt in his place and a stable channel for selling salt. If there is salt, in addition to meeting his own local needs, it will naturally be sold to various places and gain huge economic advantages for himself.
Now that Old Man Zou has received a precious piece of information, he learned that there is a salt well in Lizhou within the territory of Wuping. Of course, Li Yuan would daydream about this, even though the King of Chu, Ma Xifan, spent a lot of effort and was not rewarded. As he wished, Li Yuan believed in his intuition at this time.
Because the location of Lizhou did produce salt in later generations, and it was one of the two most famous salt fields in Hunan, but that was a thousand years later. Unexpectedly, Ma Xifan had already excavated it in the era of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. There are indeed very few records of this period in history books...
(Note: After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, through geological survey and exploration, it was discovered that Hunan is extremely rich in salt mineral resources, with proven rock salt reserves and development prospects reaching 13.6 billion tons. In June 1969, the Xiangli Salt Mine in northern Hunan Ground was broken in Yanjing Township, Lixian County, and in December of the same year, construction of the Xiangheng Salt Mine in southern Hunan began in Chashan'ao on the outskirts of Hengyang. The two became the two pillars of Hunan's salt production. Since then, it has completely overturned the "routine consumption of Huai salt" in the past. the concept of.)
As for the mining, production model and sales channels of salt, Li Yuan generally knows it well. Although he is not familiar with it, he has an advantage that others cannot match, and that is his old father-in-law Zhou Zong.
You must know that since the founding of the Southern Tang Dynasty, Zhou Zong has been ordered to take charge of the country's salt and iron power. This is also the fundamental reason why the Zhou family has become the richest man in Huainan. Even if the old man is now the Minister of the Ministry of Household Affairs, his functions are directly linked to salt, iron, grain, tea and other affairs. With the blessing of this most senior professional, if Lizhou can really produce salt, do we still need to worry about the future?
There is no need to think about whether Zhou Zong will help. Not to mention his love for his son-in-law, Li Yuan also believes that his father-in-law Zhou Zong will not refuse based on this huge profit. Otherwise, how would he make a fortune?
The only problem now is how to make edible salt from the salt in the salt well. Unlike Huaiyan, which relies on the sea to obtain salt, the salt composition in inland salt wells is complex, and the specific types of salt sources are not clear. But based on Li Yuan's knowledge base, the salt in the salt well is indeed mixed with a large number of impurities, which can be harmful to people. This may be one of the reasons why Ma Xifan gave up.
But there are always more ways than difficulties. There are always various ways to make these salts pure and fine, and a small amount of impurities will not actually have much impact on humans and animals.
ring. You must know that the coarse salt sold all over the world today also contains a lot of impurities. Many of them are sediments after being directly exposed to the sea. They contain sediment impurities and a large number of other ingredients. The officials and the people still eat them, and they don’t eat them. I saw people being poisoned to death.
The current problem seems to be how to determine the salt production in Lizhou.
…
Old man Zou personally instructed how to steam and boil Huixincao with tangerine peel, peony root, Ligusticum chuanxiong and licorice. Of course, Li Yuan refused to take his things for free. Since this thing was as precious as the old man said, he had to spend money to buy it. Down. Old man Zou refused to accept the money despite many objections. Li Yuan had to persuade him to accept the 20 guan of medicine money.
In fact, the heart grass this time is not that expensive. A total of more than ten plants of the heart grass would only cost about seven or eight dollars if sold in a drugstore. But Li Yuan was grateful that this old couple came from Lizhou to deliver them. Medicinal thoughts. In addition, Old Man Zou accidentally revealed such important information to himself, which was something that even a thousand dollars could not buy.
